


A Long and Winding Road

by deathmallow



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: F/M, Gen, Hayhanna, Odesta, Tumblr Prompts, cinnfie, collection, pluffie
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-12-09
Updated: 2014-12-14
Packaged: 2018-01-04 04:58:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 63
Words: 56,588
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1076800
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deathmallow/pseuds/deathmallow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An archive for my various THG Tumblr prompts (prompt me at whiskeysnarker.tumblr.com).  AUs, crossovers, canon, it's all here.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Haymitch/Johanna: picnic, home, sunset (for Anon)

Johanna hadn’t known that citrus fruit was harvested in the winter, but Four’s first crop with the trees transported from Eleven to an area near Victors’ Bayou now brightened the bleaker winter days, and she’d admit one advantage of this place was the lack of snow, so even in the darkening days of December, people could still go have a picnic on the beach, albeit with their shoes on and a light jacket.

Annie had taken Dylan back to the house to nap as it was coming up on dusk, but she’d return soon enough to join them; as was, Haymitch steadily peeled another orange with his pocketknife and handed Johanna a section of it, and she bit into it, feeling the burst of sour-sweet flavor on her tongue, as he remarked idly, “Never even had an orange in my life until I was on that damn train on the way to the Quell.”

That said plenty about how dirt-poor he must have been, even for Twelve, and she answered, “Far too cold up there for oranges, so we never really had ‘em either, but lots of folks in Seven would have killed for apple trees for their wedding, or chestnuts or the like—we had to plant willows and the like, they even weren’t too big on birches and maples,” because those could be tapped for their sap, and it wouldn’t do to let people have any ready food source under their own control.

"That’s right—you plant trees in the backyard at your weddings," and he glanced down at the orange again, peeling off another section neatly and holding it out to her.

"Yeah, yeah, I know, it’s about as original as forty years of tree costumes," she said dryly, licking the sticky orange juice off her fingers before she took the new slice, but it wasn’t the same at all because a newlywed’s planting was theirs, not the Capitol’s bullshit.

He shrugged lightly, and as his fingers brushed hers as she took the orange, his eyes suddenly met hers: “Maybe someday you’d like some orange trees of your own?”


	2. Haymitch/Johanna: knife, throw, trust (for Anon)

He was busy standing in the corner chatting with Troilus Fisher, the movie producer, well used to being an ornament at these parties, when Jubilation Frill chirped, “Oh, this is boring, let’s liven it up a bit!” She scanned around, seeing the victors she’d hired for her birthday party and horribly, when she saw him, her face still lit up with the same glee as it had when he’d been seventeen and she’d been fourteen and he’d been hired for her birthday. Also hired as a present for her mother after the kids were sent to bed, but Jubie probably still didn’t know that. 

Seventeen fucking years now she’d been fixated on him, and marriage and a divorce and a kid of her own hadn’t changed that. She still acted like a little girl of fourteen around him, not seeming to care that he was ageing and drinking too much and his snarky witticisms were starting to slip now and again into open caustic hatred of everyone and everything.

So he’d been drinking his share—if nothing else, the party provided him that benefit, especially knowing wryly that he’d be staying after to “thank” the hostess.

"Haymitch!" she said, clapping her hands together with glee, her smile unnaturally stiff. He wondered just how much that face lift had cost her. "You should show us your knife throwing!"

He’d long since given up trying to protest that in the arena he’d been a knife fighter, not a knife thrower,and they were two very different callings. He’d been able to throw a knife decently enough to nail a downed animal, true, but that wasn’t like the freakish precision of a Career. But, according to the Capitol, he was a knife thrower, so he’d been obliged to start practicing just so he could be trotted out as a party trick on command. 

"Oh, if you insist, this party’s gone dull as Caesar’s last games special. Now what’s my target?" he said, putting his glass down and turning to her, laying on the smooth and arrogant charm thick as he could. "Apples? A picture of a difficult co-star, sweetheart?” he addressed Jubilation.

“Any ungracious guests here?” someone shouted. “Or maybe our lovely hostess wants to be his assistant?” After the initial horror—they’d never had him throw at a live target, popping balloons and nailing pineapples was usually more their style—he laughed grimly inside. Of course these people, weaned on the Games, wouldn’t be happy with anything less than the risk of death. He almost wished Jubilation would volunteer. For a moment he entertained the thought of his hand “slipping”. _It’s such a tragedy, I blame myself, of course. We were all drinking a little too much…_

Jubilation let out a squeak that was mingled terror and arousal, almost quivering in anticipation. ”Oh, my, my, no, I couldn’t!” Of course not. Like everyone else in the Capitol, she only liked the appearance of danger. She wanted her victors safely on a leash. 

"How about…" She scanned the crowd again. He could see some people drawing back, hoping she wouldn’t choose them, and others eagerly leaning in, "…Johanna!" she finished triumphantly, pointing at the young victor standing chatting with Finnick Odair. "She’s quite the lover of throwing edged weapons too, isn’t she?"

He stared, aghast, as Johanna pushed her way through the crowd. In some ways this was worse than the whoring. One slip here and he’d kill another victor—a friend—as a fucking party trick, and he’d been drinking, dammit, so that wouldn’t help steady his hand. But of course he couldn’t back down now. 

Johanna glanced at him, shrugging impatiently. ”Oh, yay, do I get to throw axes at people next?” she inquired sweetly, blood-red lips curving into a satisfied smile. The laughter now was of the nervous kind. Johanna Mason frankly terrified most people. Finnick stared at the two of them, green eyes worried, but he knew better than to interfere.

"I’m not sure you want me throwing knives at her," he quipped, trying to find some way to wiggle out of this, "she might throw ‘em right back." He looked at her, bright-eyed and defiant, showing no signs of fear, but he remembered the terrified seventeen-year-old she’d been before they sent her to her first patron, remembered the scared kid she’d been in the arena. The Capitol covered that up with its own story, like it did everything else.

She smiled at him, showing her teeth a little, cocking her head aside as she strode towards the other end of the room. The crowd parted ways before her. As a pair of matched blond-haired and blue-clad Avoxes brought a large sheet of wood to put behind her as a backstop and hurried out of the war, she turned and clasped her hands behind her back. “I’m not like you. I’ve cheated death before,” she told them with a sharp laugh.

The knives they gave him were crap for throwing. But he was used to that. They never gave him throwing knives, just whatever kitchen knives or daggers they might have on hand, and he’d just had to adapt. Testing the balance of a couple, he selected one he thought he could work with. Shrugging off his frock coat to give his arm better motion, he casually handed it to Fisher like he was just another Avox, enjoying the small gesture of arrogant disdain. “Hold this, will you?”

Sighting the distance, calculating the rotations, he tried to not see her standing there, motionless. She wouldn’t flinch. She nodded to him. He wondered if any of these assholes knew how much courage it took for her to stand there so nonchalantly, trusting in the precision of one man’s aim. Taking a deep breath to steady himself, he let the knife fly, feeling as it left his hand that it was just slightly off. It thunked into the wood just alongside her neck and his knees almost buckled. He’d been aiming an inch or so to the left, to plant it close enough to thrill but safely over her shoulder—too much champagne, too much pressure, and the slightest wobble of his wrist had been more than enough to make a difference. Another bit more and she’d have been dead.

But he recovered in an instant, always thinking about the presentation and the act, and raised his right hand. “Steady as a rock.” He shot them a cocky smile. “So, who’s next?” He wasn’t surprised when nobody volunteered. Their appetite for danger was whetted, and none of them wanted to put their own lives on the line. 

As he, Johanna, Finnick, and the other victors left that night, he saw that she had a thin red line on her neck, just beneath her jaw where the edge of the blade had just kissed it. If it scarred up, he wasn’t sure whether he wished Remake would get rid of it so that he wouldn’t be reminded every time he saw it on her, or whether they’d leave it alone so he’d never be able to forget what these people were, and how little a person’s life meant to them.


	3. Haymitch/Johanna: foreign (for Lenai17)

He’d been a stranger in his own district for so many years—he knew full well the looks, the disgust, the condemnation. Useless, worthless, something turned from one of theirs into a thing Capitol-corrupted. He’d been foreign, existing there but not really living, not a part of the rhythms and rituals of Twelve and the Seam. Only the Capitol’s calendar and cycles had controlled his life.

Maybe it was easier this winter with just four of them, in a place that they could build for themselves. It didn’t matter that he’d been a cast-off. It didn’t matter than Peeta had been a merchie. It didn’t matter than Johanna wasn’t even from Twelve originally. What they made each day in toil and aching muscles and shared dinners was their own place.

He had the thought now and again maybe she’d have been better off back in Seven, with someone else who knew where she came from. Even without the old society here, all of them had grown up Twelve, and he knew their ways were odd to Johanna. Their accents, their cooking, their songs, their little superstitions and idioms and ways of viewing the world—all different.

But she’d come from the arena. In the end that shadow held more sway than district of origin, which was part of why the victors had always bonded so well. Nobody who’d avoided it could understand those who survived it, not really.

He didn’t want her to feel she lost who she was by coming here. The Capitol ruthlessly remade victors in its own image already. She’d been alone for far too long, rejected by too many people, just as he had. It would be too easy for her to believe that this wouldn’t last either, and it wouldn’t be her place, her home. 

It wasn’t easy to say in words, but he tried to say it with actions, hoping she understood. So he sometimes asked Peeta to bake her some Seven cookies or tried to subtly ferret out some more things from back home that he could use to surprise her. He’d go out into the woods with her for firewood or checking traps, asking her about woodcraft, even if he knew already. He’d touch her, a brush of her hand with his over dinner or scrubbing her back in the bath or the soft caress of his fingers on her skin upstairs in their bed. Telling her, I’m glad you’re here, you belong…I want you to be happy.

The first time she casually said, “Let’s go home” as they trudged through the woods lugging yet another sledge of firewood, the cold and the fatigue suddenly didn’t matter. He felt like anything was possible right then.

(A/N: Takes place early in AFAF)


	4. Haymitch/Johanna: space and pirates (for Shehadawarriorsheart)

"You really need to stop drinking this shiong mao niao,” Johanna said, slapping her hat down on the battered wood table, kicking up her heels and nudging the brown stoneware jug of moonshine with her foot, “it’s not like we need our captain sober or anything, mm?”

"I’ve got extra brain cells to lose yet, darlin’, no worries that I won’t be up to the job," Haymitch returned flippantly, watching as she took a hefty swig of the liquor herself, rather than a ladylike sip like that silly coreworld priss Trinket always would, chirping at the crew about their maaaaaanners.

She grunted at that, telling him with a smirk, “Like I said, this job goes over right and we get ourselves a little rebellion, I’ll be in my bunk, with you, both of us fucking each other silly…so let’s hope you’re not too drunk for that job either.”

(A/N: Haymitch as Mal, Johanna as Jayne, Effie as Simon, Finnick as Inara, Annie as River, Peeta as Wash, Katniss as Zoe, still thinking on Kaylee and Book)


	5. Blight/Clover (OFC): magic (for Etraytin)

They met one last time at the little apartment that had finally been given to the victors after the aides and Gameskeepers finally complained too much about goings-on in the lounge. Haymitch’s barely suppressed irritation had probably helped that matter too. It doubled up as a discreet spot for some of the powerful chosen few who wanted a rendezvous with a victor without the public being aware. That meant it was one of the very few places without surveillance everywhere.

After so many years, Clover’s body was utterly familiar to him. “Amaranth and Rye?” he asked.

“Busy,” she answered, shaking her head, dark blond hair spread across the pillow.

“Oh.” That was new. But he supposed given Rice studiously avoided other victors and made it obvious he hated being here as a mentor, and the next closest males to Amaranth in age were Finnick and Gloss who she probably didn’t feel comfortable being around, she might well turn to her fellow Nine victor, even if he was slightly older. “At least they’re not alone tonight.” He knew Johanna would be—she wore her isolation angrily, bristling fiercely like a porcupine’s spikes.

“Don’t want to talk about that,” she murmured, brushing her fingers over his chest.

Then talk about what? The way he’d only ever seen his wife for a few weeks each summer? That the Capitol didn’t even know because they wouldn’t legally recognize it since for two victors from different districts marriage was impossible? Sometimes he hated Chantilly and Niello, or those two kids of Haymitch’s, just a bit, because at least they’d have each other all the time. But then he thought about Tilly and Niel’s kids, and he was grateful Amitra would never endure that.

He’d never thought he’d be a father. But then she’d pulled him aside and told him the shot had run out before the last Games were over, pulled out a few pictures of a child just a few months old. She’s safe, I managed to hide the pregnancy and my sister’s pretending she had a little girl. The misery in her eyes at having to hand over her child and pretend to just be her aunt mirrored what was in his own heart, but keeping that little girl safe was more than worth it.

Every year he looked at new pictures, not sure whether he wanted to see something of Seven in his daughter—woodland hazel eyes, darker hair than Clover’s—or whether he hoped she’d be perfect Nine looks, keeping her secret safe. Every year he made her toys that he discreetly slipped to Clover, and gave some to the other victors with young kids and nieces and nephews so it didn’t look suspicious at all.

This was reality. He’d been barely a husband and a father only in the loosest sense of the word. Even this little rebellion Haymitch was proposing wouldn’t wave a magic wand and make it all better and erase everything they’d been forced to give up already. But still…there might be the chance. Amitra was so young yet. Maybe. Maybe they could be together when it was all over.

“Dammit, why Cedrus didn’t volunteer…”

“Ced’s got that lousy prosthetic and would be dead thirty seconds into it and he’ll be better at getting sponsors than me. You know that.” He knew his own weaknesses and what he couldn’t handle now. After what they’d forced him to do, for years now, he could barely stand to look at a Capitol person, let alone cajole them for money. He knew Johanna hated him for how he’d been unable to deal with how they were whoring her out. In some ways he couldn’t deal with her because he knew that her “act” in the arena had been real and she reminded him all too clearly of his own failings and fears. One crack-up could easily recognize another, even if she tried to cover it with rage. 

He’d failed too many people in his life. He couldn’t fail even more now. “You stay safe in there,” Clover insisted, fingers gripping his arm. 

He gathered her in close, kissing the top of her head, seeing the grey hairs sprinkled among the blond. He wanted to see her grow older yet, be there by her side for it. “I’ll try,” he told her, knowing that was the only promise he could make.


	6. Haymitch/Johanna: loss (for Roseofsinnoh)

Haymitch picked up the black rook between thumb and forefinger. Holding it aloft for a moment, he looked over at her and gave her a victorious smirk, placing it on the square occupied by her own bishop. Plucking the white piece up and setting it out of play beside the chessboard, he told her, “Oh, let’s have the shirt first, darlin’.”

Meeting his smile equally, never letting it waver, she tugged the t-shirt over her head and dropped it beside her chair. Leaning forward, elbows on the table and chin on her hands, she knew that put her breasts on perfect display. Seeing the direction of his glance switching between the chessboard and her, she kept the smile up. Picking up her rook, she moved it forward, right into the path of his knight.

“Now the trousers,” he commented, sitting back in his chair and watching as she shucked her trousers off, taking a little extra time to shimmy them down her hips.

Quickly enough he had her down to just her underwear and bra, and he’d lost only his shirt sacrificing a pawn to capture her knight. She tossed her bra at him with the next loss, leaning back and draping one arm over the back of the chair as she studied the pieces, knowing he was watching her but not meeting that fierce, hungry gaze.

With that, knowing she had him well distracted, she stopped messing around. The next three rounds were all hers with how she’d set him up for it. He stared at the board in irritation, obviously looking for the quickest move to take just one more of her pieces. “Work for it,” she told him sweetly.

He flashed a grin that promised that the fun wasn’t going to end at the chessboard, and deliberately moved his queen right to where she could take it. “Checkmate.”

Staring at it, she realized he was right and she hadn’t seen that one coming. “Well, shit.” Raising an eyebrow and getting up from her chair, she stood beside him, hands on his shoulders. “How many times in a row have I lost this game now?”

“Well now, I like to think,” he hooked his fingers in the waistband of her underwear, lightly tugging them down, “we both win at this game.”


	7. Cinna/Effie: snow (for Roseofsinnoh)

To be perfectly honest, Effie was miserable away from the Capitol. But she’d abide by the deal she’d made, never to return, and to spend the rest of her life in the districts trying to make some kind of restitution. It could have been worse, she realized. Some out there wouldn’t have cared about her ordeal in the Detention Center and only wanted to see her suffer more.

She was trying, but Twelve was still so dreadfully quiet and small, rather ramshackle and dirty still with its rebuilding efforts. She missed the comforting press of busy streets and tall buildings, missed dancing, art, music, theater, the giddy whirl of a lively social crowd. She’d never felt lost or alone or unwanted there. But she could never say that to most people. At least there was Cinna to make it easier, someone who understood the longing for some of the old days and their comforts without automatically ramming accusations down her throat about being Capitol and spoiled and condoning atrocities.

“Wake up,” he nudged her, and blearily she opened her eyes to see him grinning at her almost boyishly.

“What on Earth?” she mumbled, glancing at the clock. “I don’t get up until seven thirty, Cinnabar Locke, you know that full well.”

He pulled back the curtain and she saw the patterning of frost on the glass, like lace drawn with a delicate hand. “First snow,” he said, and she slipped from the bed, squeaking as she stepped off the rug onto the cold wooden floor in her bare feet, but she looked out. The snow was still falling lightly, but District Twelve sparkled in the morning light. The place was made new, covered softly in clean, pure white, and suddenly it didn’t seem nearly so rustic and ugly. 

“Beautiful,” she said, slipping her hand into his as they stood there even past the alarm going off, both admiring the sight.


	8. Finnick: hope (for Sabaceanbabe)

Haymitch gave Finnick that knowing grin that he had. “It’s just what I said, Finn, a friendly-like little get-together. Have a few drinks and share some stories, maybe, before we all get set to killing each other.” The smirk deepened. “Maybe start arguing about who gets to kill me once the fun begins.”

Finnick shook his head, looking carefully at Haymitch’s expression. “Beetee going to be there?”

“Of course. He’s in this shit with the rest of us.”

A tingle of excitement went down Finnick’s spine. Mentioning Beetee meant the Three victor would be messing with the security feed to give them privacy. This was finally that meeting. The pieces had been in place for a while. “Good. I’m ready.”

Haymitch clapped a hand on his shoulder to hold him and leaned in closer, gruff voice barely above a murmur. “This goes off right, Katniss lives and you go home to your girl.”

Annie. The swell of hope in him at that idea, where there had been only despair before, was almost overwhelming. He’d come here ready to kill the rest of them, sick at the thought but knowing Annie needed him to come home. But coming back to her would cost him what was left of his soul. “And you?” he asked carefully. 

Haymitch’s carefully nonchalant smile as he shook his head, as if Finnick was a silly child who’d said something incredible, said it all. To go home to Annie without the stain of being the sole survivor…but still, losing some friends along the way, hit him like a punch to the gut. Mags had already told him matter-of-factly that she didn’t expect to survive, and here was Haymitch, equally resigned to his fate. It was a glimmer of hope, rather than a ray of light, and that was the best he was going to get. He’d still take it for all it was worth. “So you’ll give all of us hope but keep none for yourself,” he observed. 

That smile turned sharp enough to cut now. “Since when have the Games been fair?”


	9. Hayhanna: music/song (for Districtunrest)

Johanna scoffed and nudged Haymitch aside with her hip, “You can make insanely complicated snares but you can’t pitch a tent?”

“I can make a shelter just fine. This damn thing has too many poles,” he grumbled, moving aside, letting her start assembling the framework.

Soon enough with a pitched tent and a crackling fire, Johanna spread the blankets out in front of the fire. Nobody in Seven ever slept in the sweltering stuffy canvas tent if it was a nice night, and the evening looked clear. It felt good out here, like the best of the old days. She couldn’t be little innocent Hanna again but being here as a newlywed out in the woods on a summer night for some privacy, felt like she was reclaiming a bit of the life that would have been hers. And he was the one that had planned it and given it back to her, knowing what it meant.

He pulled out his fiddle after dinner, and she smiled a little. He’d played for her often enough, but there was a special spark to it now, remembering the singing around the fires. She was surprised when he moved into a lively Seven song she actually recognized. Another year of winter snow/Watched it come and watched it go/But now it’s a fine summertime/And the moon’s shining through the trees/Come and take a walk with me?

Seeing the look on her face, he gave her a bit of a cocky Yeah, I know smile but his eyes were gentle as he said, “Happy birthday.” When she put her hands on his shoulders and leaned down to kiss him, he cautioned her, “Take it easy on the fiddle…”

“That what you call it now?” she laughed.


	10. Blight/Clover: soften, open, morning (for Theboyfallsfromthesky)

Maybe it was perspective from loving Haymitch, a man who also seemed hellbound to see the dark and flawed and unlovely parts of himself first and sometimes exclusively, but Clover finally figured Johanna had softened towards Blight enough to forgive him when she saw the two of them together at Amitra’s birthday party actually talking about something that wasn’t related to carpentry or Seven.

He must have realized it too and taken it to heart, because he was humming that night, his face peaceful and content as they tucked Ami in to bed, touching their little girl’s light brown hair as she said, “‘Night, Daddy.”

They’d had to hide everything from the Capitol for so long that to be able to live openly as husband and wife and with a little girl rather than pretending to be just fuckbuddies and Blight feigning occasional interest in Clover’s youngest niece, still startled her sometimes, though she was growing more used to it.

But the idea that it wouldn’t be just denial, a life half-lived, letters and whispers and lies and a precious few hours in his bed or hers in the Training Center where love was always tainted with death—it was creeping up on her, and like any good child of Nine who’d plowed and fertilized and sprayed and weeded fields in her day, she knew she had to regularly nurture a thing to help maximize its potential and help it grow. 

Every morning waking up beside him, every night she held him in her arms without the Games surrounding it, every moment she now had with him as her husband and Ami’s father, she used to feed that contentment and hope within her and help it keep growing strong.

(A/N: HID/AFAF AU where Blight survives the arena)


	11. Haymitch/Johanna: elevator (for Anon)

"So what do you think, now that everyone wants to sleep with you?" Johanna said, glancing over her shoulder towards him for a moment as she said it, and he could just imagine her smirk at teasing him about how the fickle Capitol assholes fawned over him again since his star rose in the last year—the mentor who’s accomplished the impossible!—sometimes he was actually afraid that someone would offer for him again because the attention was all too familiar, but he hoped the difference between a man in his early thirties and one past forty, and too much publicity about the drinking, had burned too many bridges for them to fully forget it.

"Uh, actually—" Katniss started, her tone disgruntled; yeah, this was what happened when two strong-willed women butted heads.

Pivoting in an abrupt motion, Johanna chided her, “I wasn’t talking to you,” and Haymitch was grateful she hadn’t been talking to Peeta either, cruelly taunting him with his own sheer ignorance about the prostitution circuit, because he’d have had to call her out on that crap.

She didn’t care about the kids, that was obvious—it was him she spoke to with the prospect of this being on the verge of a goodbye, plenty of memories there between them, some good, many full of bitter-black laughter over a shared pain and maybe a shared bottle, and he wasn’t too surprised when she started stripping off in part to unsettle the kids and keep them at a distance, but also to divest herself of the Capitol’s mark on her.

They’d always understood each other well enough—she was angry, she was here telling him she wasn’t going to just take it lying down this time—she would almost definitely join them when he asked, and so his “Thank you” wasn’t merely for the sight of her body.


	12. Haymitch/Johanna: diner at 1 AM (for Anon)

His radio was quiet, so Haymitch and the new trainee had stopped for some food at the diner out near the county line, neon and chrome against the dark midnight sky. He watched her push the fries around in the puddle of ketchup on her plate, hungrily chowing them down three and four at a time. ”Job works up an appetite,” he commented, sitting back in the booth and eyeing the blueberry pie in the brightly lit display case. Pie and coffee—yeah, that’d be the good way to end the meal. Anyone who’d never done CPR for twenty minutes straight, non-stop, never knew what an effort it was, and he knew his shoulders and chest wouldn’t thank him in the morning. ”But you handled it well.” The fact that she could eat after helping scrape someone off the pavement a few hours ago said plenty about her fortitude. He’d had his share of puking rookies.

She mumbled a muffled “Thanks” through the rest of her fries.

"So obviously you’ve done the death thing before," he said matter-of-factly, taking a bite of his cheeseburger.

She swallowed, glanced up through the strands of brown hair falling loose from her messy ponytail, brown eyes suddenly narrowing and turning hard. ”We really need to share our life stories for me to come train with you, Abernathy?” 

"Nope. Imagine you’ve heard about me anyway. Heard you’re only going through a paramedic cert to buff up your firefighter application, so that’s why they sent you to me." Well, that and Chaff was out for a while with a broken hand.

"While you’re the reverse, huh?" She reached over and stole a couple of his fries. "I heard you made lieutenant quick enough, and they were talking about you for captain. You made some great saves. They still have your picture up at the firehouse when I toured it. And then you quit all of a sudden and turned paramedic." The question was unspoken but it was there: Didn’t have the stomach for fire anymore?

Points to Johanna Mason for guts, if nothing else. Most people edged around the subject—as if he didn’t know that they wondered and judged. ”I lost my family and my girlfriend when I was sixteen. Our house burned. Almost died myself, except a fireman pulled me out in time. And I knew that was what I was meant to do with my life.” He shrugged, shoving the plate with the rest of the fries towards her. ”So I made firefighter and we did the dance, fire and me, and sometimes I lost and sometimes I got some good saves in.”

But especially after making lieutenant it all came crashing down on him. He wasn’t only responsible for the victims in there, he was responsible for the rest of the crew, and that plus fighting a foe that took every bit of focus and instinct—a couple hard losses of victims and of fellow firefighters, nearly dying again himself and adding more burn scars to the old ones already hidden beneath his clothes, and he’d started sneaking too much whiskey into his coffee at the station house to feel like he could face it. It was a vicious cycle and the paralyzing feel of helplessness crept up on him more and more. ”It took me a while but I realized—I don’t love fire. Any true firefighter loves it a little, they love the adrenaline of it, they love the rush of beating it. For them it’s almost better than sex. For me? Fire wasn’t the enemy, it wasn’t the point. It’s just an obstacle I tried to outsmart.”

"So what’s the point then?" He looked at her—mid-twenties, full of grit and enthusiasm. He’d been like that once. He wondered if the ferocity in her was true firefighter passion or if, like him, it had been confronting his demons in the wrong way. The point wasn’t that Briar and the rest had died by fire—it was that they’d died, and he couldn’t save them. 

"For me? The lives at risk. Before, I’d usually have to hand ‘em off to the paramedics and go hurry back to the fire. But I realized they were really where I wanted to be. They were what’s important to me." It killed him every time they lost one and it was still a struggle to not slosh the whiskey in his coffee after a bad night. He’d spent most of the previous Friday trying to not think about a dead kid they’d found in the park. The dead ones stayed with him and they always would. 

But he got more of a thrill out of a save on the ambulance than he ever had fighting the flames. To beat a fire was one thing, but to give a “fuck you” to death itself and give someone back their life was gratifying like nothing he’d ever experienced. Maybe working the ambulance came with less prestige than fighting fire had, but he’d never seriously regretted it since transferring five years ago.

She looked thoughtful at that, pushing his empty plate back towards him. ”They died in a cabin fire when I was seventeen. Family camping trip. I got out alive because I was sleeping on the porch after I argued with my sister.”

He knew what thing of value she gave him by admitting it, and so he didn’t make a big deal of it and make her uncomfortable. Because he knew the grief and rage and sense of helplessness all too well, and that bewilderment at how the little bits of pure chance and happenstance added up to being the only one left alive. ”Now, I could see you with an axe charging in and kicking some ass,” he acknowledged, grinning wryly at her. ”Maybe it is about the fire for you, and maybe it isn’t. But you’ll do some good here anyway while you’re training, and you’ve got some time to figure it out before you put that application in.”

"Thanks." Now she actually looked at him with something that wasn’t thinly veiled curiosity or impatient disdain.

"Rookie usually buys dinner, by the way," he told her. "I’m thinking some coffee and pie to finish off?" 

"You’re the one with money," she pointed out with a challenging smirk that he enjoyed. She’d hold her own, no matter where life took her.

The radio suddenly squelched and crackled to life as he heard the voice of Heavensbee from Dispatch. ”We’d better take a rain check on the pie,” he muttered as he reached for it.


	13. Haymitch/Hazelle (for districtunrest)

Haymitch and Briar had put her and Ash to work picking blackberries from the bush while they checked the lines. As usual, Hazelle wanted to complain that she was thirteen, that at that age Briar had been running the lines, and Ash was OK but he was only eleven. But she knew her sister wanted time alone with her boyfriend, so she wrinkled her nose, focused on the berries, and tried to not think about that. He’d never even noticed her anyway. It was Briar Wainwright that got him tongue-tied and made him light up when she walked in, not Hazelle. Stupid. It was only since last fall since Briar started stepping out with him that Hazelle started to notice him anyway, or maybe it was that she was getting old enough.

Stupid Haymitch—he wasn’t even nearly as tall and handsome as Jonas Hawthorne, or as sweet as Burdock Everdeen. He was short and snarky and sometimes the way he smiled…she cursed as a blackberry bramble dug into her thumb with her inattention. The red blood mingled with the dark purple juice.

“You OK?” Ash asked quietly, looking over at her with concern in his grey eyes and a strange look she wasn’t sure she could read.

“I’m fine,” she said, sucking the wound a bit, ignoring him and going back to the berries.

Finally she heard Haymitch and Briar coming back. Haymitch had two rabbits slung over his shoulder, his shirt clinging to him a bit in the July heat as Hazelle looked away. “Good haul on the berries,” Briar said, laughing happily as she came up and gave Hazelle a hug.

“We’ll eat decent tonight, that’s for sure,” Haymitch muttered. “Might as well.”

“Hay…”

“They’re not three, Bri, they both know what happens tomorrow,” Haymitch said irritably, pulling out his knife and starting to skin the rabbits. “Double the tributes.”

“At least Ash isn’t in it.” Ash was still too young for the reaping, but the thought of the Quell terrified Hazelle, ever since they read the card back in April and every kid in Panem found out their risk doubled this year.

“But Haze is. Joe and Lorna. Burt. You and me.”

“Nothing much that we can do about it,” Hazelle piped up, stricken at the thought that of all her sister’s friends, Briar was the only one who could volunteer for a younger sibling. Burt was an only child—all his brothers and sisters died young. Jonas couldn’t volunteer for his little sister Lorna. Ash was a year too young to be a risk for Haymitch.

If they called her name tomorrow from that stage, would she want Briar to volunteer, and would she go to die in the arena hating her sister if she didn’t? Briar looked at her solemnly, reaching out and giving her a fierce hug. “Nothing’s gonna happen to you,” she said fiercely, and Hazelle felt the tightness in her chest ease a little.

“Briar…”

“Shut up, Hay, you know we’ve gotta do what we’ve gotta do for our families first,” but Briar’s voice wavered enough for Hazelle to know the idea of it tore at her.

They didn’t call Briar or Hazelle Wainwright the next day as the kids all stood in the square, the day sticky-hot without a breath of wind. But they did call Haymitch Abernathy and Hazelle watched those Games clutching her sister’s hand, willing him to come back.

Two weeks after he came home, she stood beside the boy with his burned, bandaged hands and ancient eyes as they buried her sister in the cemetery. “If you need anything…” her ma started to say to him, even as Hazelle saw the faint wracking shudder in her as she obviously struggled to hold it together until they got home.

“No, I’ll be all right, Mrs. Wainwright,” he said quickly, seeming almost in a hurry to get away, head up the hill towards his new house in Victors’ Village. He’d come home a stranger to everyone, and maybe she’d realized during the Games that it was a stupid crush against the blazing fire her sister had for him, but she missed her friend even as she mourned her sister.

Life went on in the Seam as best it could. Lorna Hawthorne ended up hanged for poaching, and she and Jonas ended up drifting together in shared understanding of loss. Burt married the apothecary’s daughter. Haymitch stayed locked up in that house of his most of the time, though every summer it seemed like he got a little more Capitol with the company he kept. Too good for us, people began to mutter. 

There was Jonas, and the mines and the babies, and that was life. If it wasn’t easy, at least there was goodness to it. Three boys exhausted her and yet she let herself get careless with the tonic, maybe hoping that a fourth baby would be the girl she so longed to have. 

They couldn’t decide whether to name a baby girl Briar or Lorna, but at night Jonas rubbed her growing belly and whispered his answering hope to hers, both of them longing for a daughter. Their sons were beautiful, but they hadn’t filled that old, still-raw ache. 

As well she didn’t have to manage the expense of a coffin for Jonas, given there was nothing to bury. The three weeks of death benefits paid by the government had to go towards food for the kids, and she knew she’d have to find a job rather than taking the next few months off. But she couldn’t go back down the mines with a clumsy pregnant belly. For a minute she glanced up the hill, desperately trying to think of some way to survive. He was the only one she knew that had money to spare.

No. Haymitch wouldn’t help her simply for Hazelle’s asking based on a marriage to Briar that had never been, and the sake of a friendship twenty years gone. And as to what she could offer him…he’d never taken up with anyone in Twelve since Briar. From how he’d been caught on camera with them year after year, he clearly liked fancy Capitol women—and some men, for that matter. He wouldn’t pay for a too-skinny, tired Seam woman approaching middle age and swollen with another man’s child.

Despite the pains, she persisted and she finished the wash before she called the apothecary to midwife for her, needing the money the laundry would bring. When she finally held her daughter, her beautiful little girl, she couldn’t bear to name her for either Briar or Lorna. There had been too many dead in her life already. “Posy,” she whispered, breathing in the scent of her. “My little Posy.”

The next few years weren’t easy. She couldn’t go back to her old job of being a blast captain—she knew someone else would have trained for it in her absence, and if she died down there in the mines, that was four kids sent to the Community Home. She’d just have to make ends meet. 

Gale took up the job of hunting and trapping, and it helped some, but even with that and his tesserae it was never enough. Her roughened hands still cracked and bled sometimes if she worked too long at the laundry tub. A few times she went to Peacekeepers’ Row when the laundry wasn’t enough, praying the kids wouldn’t find out. What Peacekeepers would pay for a woman past thirty-five, anyway, when there were girls half her age equally desperate. The few that took her up on it seemed to do so out of sympathy and a fierce, aching loneliness. They were usually older sorts, almost done with their full twenty years of duty, and starting to think about all the things in life they hadn’t been able to have. They almost always wanted to talk before and often after, acting kind enough and treating her as if they wanted the full companionship of a wife for a few hours rather than the brief cheap use of a whore. They’d pay for the illusion of love.

She didn’t love them, and she went home and washed their touch off her and tried to forget their loneliness. But she couldn’t hate them as cleanly as Gale so obviously did.

For all that she’d done her best to forget him for years, Haymitch circled back into her life the year after Katniss won the Games. After Gale’s whipping, nobody would risk sending their wash to her, and with him still recovering, she was in dire straits again.

They hired her to clean Haymitch’s house. Funny how she’d ended up as maid for the house her sister should have been mistress of, but life often wasn’t fair. Picking through broken bottles and smashed furniture, she silently toiled even as she tried to not feel too much disgust at what a waste he’d made of his life. When she cleaned upstairs in his bedroom, she found a well-handled photograph of Haymitch, his mother, and Ash. There was a yearbook, lacking dust and thus showing it had been handled recently enough. It opened automatically to the page with Briar, the spine creased to that one particular spot. Of course—he wouldn’t have a picture of himself with her. Nobody in the Seam had money for things like a camera.

She didn’t know whether the few wrinkles on the page were from drops of white liquor or tears, and how old they might be. But she shut the book hastily and slid it back into the cubby beneath the nightstand, feeling like she’d seen too much, and hurting at the sight of her sister’s face.

To her relief, Haymitch didn’t think her job as his housekeeper came with other, more intimate duties. She knew she couldn’t have refused him if he had. She needed the job far too much to lose it, and if a victor spoke up against her, what defense would she have? But if anything he seemed to avoid her as he ever had, though he kept insisting she bring food home from his house for the children. There was one awkward, embarrassed offer of, “If you or the kids ever need anything, you know that…”

“I know.” They didn’t say much of anything at all, though, right through District Thirteen. She wouldn’t be the one to pester him, particularly given that he looked like a man going through hell and that there wasn’t much to say.

Gale went to District Two, unable to come back, and she felt that mothers’ loss at finally knowing her child had separated from her to go live his own life. But at least she had Rory, Vick, and Posy, and she wanted them to grow up with trees and grass, not steel walls.

She knocked on Haymitch’s door when she came back. At least she knew him, or knew him enough to know that she would be safe here. Given how tenuous things had been since Jonas died, that kind of security was a blessing not to be underestimated. “Do you need someone to look after the place again?” she asked as he answered, blinking blearily at her. He’d been drinking again, clearly, but she wasn’t afraid of him. If anything, knowing what she did now after some of the revelations of what Snow had done to various victors, she understood him, understood what had happened to Briar, understood just why he’d never married, tried to sympathize with him rather than pity him.

“Yeah,” he finally said softly, rubbing his chin with a faint scritch of several days of stubble. “Why don’t you come on in?”


	14. Haymitch/Johanna: Seven Years, Seven Pines'verse (for Melissa)

“Is toigh leam seo…" Hamish told her, eyes lingering at the sight of her stretched out in the sun beside the lake to dry, shameless as anything and bold as she’d been threatening him the night he came to her father’s inn. He reached out to touch her, to gradually learn her and naming each part of her in Gaelic as he did so—the sleek damp tendrils of her brown hair, the proud arch of her cheekbone, the softness of her breast, the curve of her hip. Somehow it was easier to give her body this sort of devotion with the words that came easier to his tongue than the English did. 

Johanna gave him an impish smile and echoed, “Ich mag dieses,” and bold as ever, her hand slid down to grasp him as he let out a gasp of surprised pleasure, “und du heisst es ’mein Teil’, ja?”

Wryly he thought that of the few words of German he did know from the mercenaries, “cock” was certainly one of them, but she could have called it just about anything she liked in that moment. ”Ja,” he moved to kiss her, put his hands back on her without any fear now, amused and infinitely relieved that her boldness extended to this too, “and such a clever lass you are.”


	15. Haymitch/Johanna: Haymitch in the Third Quell (for Roseofsinnoh)

Midnight and right on cue, lightning slashed and arced through the sky across the still dark waters of the little sea, lighting up the night. Looking at it, Haymitch thought as usual that with no thunder there was an eerie, unnatural quality to the lightning—but then, nothing about this arena was natural, from the traps and dangers and mutts to the Capitol minds that had inspired the whole damn Games.

Looking over at the four sleeping forms on the sand, he thought of Katniss who already had to survive their escape tomorrow at all costs, and Finnick, who both had lovers anxiously watching them up in Mentor Central. Briefly glancing at Beetee, his eyes stayed on Johanna a long while; no lover was waiting for her—or for him—and he thought about how the only thing she’d wanted was to angrily fuck with the Capitol one last time by making them see her as someone human, someone able to love and be loved. 

It had all been an act, of course, but suddenly he wished that for her, she’d find that reality in some world beyond this hellhole. Of all people, he knew what it was like to be alone for far too long with disgrace for a sole companion—she still had a chance to escape that, and he wanted that for her with an intensity that almost startled him. 

(HID/AFAF outtake)


	16. Cinna/Effie: designing a wedding dress (for Roseofsinnoh)

"We should keep the neckline unfinished for now," Effie told him, and when Cinna turned to look at her, her hands fluttered a little nervously as if trying to cover herself from his gaze, and she almost mumbled as she explained, "So that it can be…completed when I do the fitting to make sure Johanna’s scars don’t show."

He wondered how many scars Effie Trinket carried on her own skin, and how many she carried, like him, that were written entirely on the soul.

Looking at the deep blue silk, embroidered with silver, meant for Johanna’s Victory Ball gown, he reassured himself that Effie’s soul had survived the Detention Center—she still believed in beautiful things and the remark about the neckline spoke of a kindness that no Capitol torments had been able to burn out of her.


	17. Haymitch/Johanna: genderswap (for Shehadawarriorsheart)

Waking up that morning was different from most any other, and not just because balance had been restored to the world in the previous day’s battle. ”Well, the Avatar did say there might be some…changes still from the spirit energy let loose in the world,” Haymitch said dubiously. ”And there are plenty of trickster spirits…”

Johanna scowled at him and barked, “Yeah, yeah, you and your mystical ‘guardians of the spirit gates’ Water Tribe stuff. I have a cock, if you hadn’t noticed!” Her voice was a deep baritone growl to go with her new male body. 

"And I’m missing one, if you hadn’t noticed," he said dryly, indicating his new body with ample breasts and hips.

Johanna stared down curiously. ”It really does kind of have a mind of its own, doesn’t it…I mean, I’ve seen you wake up like this often enough…”

"Do I need to leave the two of you to get better acquainted?" he said grumpily, throwing the furs aside and getting out of bed, feeling too warm. He felt small, weaker. His strides were shorter and felt odd due to the wider hips, and he felt heavier in a way. Not fatter, just somehow centered lower to the ground. Too bad Finnick was the earthbender, not him—maybe that was why Finnick remarked women were more natural earthbenders than men?

He’d seen Johanna’s eyes were still the same golden brown, and he imagined his were still the same silver grey. But as he reached inside, tapping into that energy within and seeing that the water in the basin still answered his call, he let out a sigh of relief. ”I’m still a waterbender. I imagine you’re still a firebender.” A whoosh behind him and a touch of heat told him that Johanna had probably tested that. ”So our spirits are still exactly the same, Hanna. I still feel like a man. It’s just a physical change, and I imagine the Avatar’s gonna sort this one out in time.”

He turned back to her, seeing her propped up on an elbow, patting the furs beside herself…himself? She smirked, and damn if something in him didn’t respond to it, despite the oddity of her heavier-boned face and broad-shouldered man’s body, because he could still see Johanna there. ”Well,” she said, once again displaying a firebender’s ready heat and passion, “in that case…if we’re not gonna go outside right away…I can think of a way to pass the time.” She grinned. ”It’s cold here at the North Pole, and you’d better keep me warm. I need to keep my body heat up, you know.”

"You’re just curious. Admit it."

"Like you’re not." 

(A/N: ATLA/THG crossover)


	18. Haymitch/Johanna: first conversation in the Capitol during 75th Games (for Shehadawarriorsheart)

Haymitch approached her the first day of training, catching up to her at the dummies for throwing hand-weapons. Johanna sent another axe spinning end over end right into the chest target, not even pausing as he took up station next to her with a handful of throwing knives. “So we’re having ourselves a little rebellion and I want you to join,” he said, leaning in towards her. “Meeting in a couple days, but I wanted to talk to you myself.”

She knew there were a few mutterings here and there, but she hadn’t planned on it coming to anything. She gave a sharp bark of laughter, appreciating his bluntness. “Really? What’s changed?”

“The girl,” he said, hefting one knife, balancing it carefully in his hand. She could see how steady he was now compared to what a ruin he’d been over the last few years, drunk all the time. He looked sharp and purposeful—dangerous, even. That more than anything told her he was serious. He’d put the booze away and turned his mind towards fucking things up for Snow.

Still, she turned and looked at the skinny, short little Twelve girl at the edible plants station. If there was a poorer actress out there, Johanna would be surprised—she wasn’t fooled by that cutesy little teen romance. “She’s not much,” she said dismissively. “Definitely not everything the Capitol gets all hysterical about.” They really wanted to center a rebellion around her? “I bet she’s actually a handful to deal with, mm? Don’t think I didn’t notice the boy actually did most of the work of their little romance.”

Haymitch laughed at that, and she heard the appreciativeness in his tone. “Figured it wouldn’t slip past you. But keep your mouth shut, Jo. Yeah, I’ll admit she’s not ideal, but they responded to her, and she listens to me enough to not get everyone around her killed.”

“Just not enough to keep us all out of the arena,” Johanna said mockingly, “even if you kept her boyfriend safe by insisting you’re going in rather than him.” Pardon me if I resent the little darling just a bit for throwing me back in hell just because Snow’s pissed with her. Then again, she and Haymitch knew better than anyone else that Snow always made everyone else pay for someone’s screw up. 

“And she’s what we’ve got,” Haymitch said with a shrug, throwing a knife and hitting the dummy’s shoulder. “She gave it enough of a shove that everything’s finally all come together this time. Snow’s overdoing it with this one—he’s losing the Capitol by this because they love her. So, in or out?”

“Oh, in.” She looked over at him and grinned. “You think I’d pass up the chance to fuck over Coriolanus Snow after all this time?”

“You think I would?” he said, with an answering smirk, but she could see the concern in his eyes. “That means she survives, Jo. Even if the rest of us don’t.”

It galled her. If she was going to die for anyone’s sake, it ought to be Haymitch or Finnick, the people who actually had given a shit whether she lived or died, not some spoiled little brat who’d never know what the aftermath of being a victor was really like. But weighing that against the possibility of ending it and seeing Snow taken down—that was worth something. She was going into the arena and chances were good she’d die in there anyway. She might as well make it worthwhile. “Yeah, fine, I’m in. Just don’t try to make me be buddies with her.” She gave a snort of amusement. “He’s too wholesome to be real and she’s too stupid to realize how lucky she is. At least I’ll never have to mentor with them. Would have been so boring without you here, you know.” She really would have missed him. That would have been the loss of one of the few people that actually mattered to her.

“Aw, I think that’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me,” he returned snarkily, but she caught the wry half-smile he gave as he turned to grab another knife.

(A/N: HID outtake)


	19. Haymitch: sings sometimes when he's alone, what happens when he's not?  (for Districtunrest)

Ten years and five kids—he’d started the lullabies a little gruffly and awkwardly with Walt but by now with Tammy, the songs were solid, smooth, and polished as the good oak crib he and Johanna had built together.

Johanna usually told stories when it was her night to tuck them in. As usual she was in the hallway as he went between the kids’ rooms. Looking at Tammy’s grey eyes and her drowsy smile, thinking of Johanna out there probably smiling also, he sang for the ones he loved. _And the wild mountain thyme grows among the purple heather._


	20. Cinna/Portia: meeting for the first time (for Worldwithinworld)

She was pure energy, ten minutes late the first day of class, turquoise braids flying and out of breath, as she crashed down into the seat in front of Cinna. “Miss Devine,” the instructor said blandly, “kindly be on time tomorrow or don’t bother coming back.”

Told to partner up, she turned to him, offering a hand. “Portia Devine,” she said.

“Cinnabar Locke. Cinna.” Unusually, she didn’t ask about his having a victor for a mother and the Secretary of Finance for a father. 

She just looked at his sketches, throwing out ideas rapid-fire, and Cinna decided he liked her.


	21. Haymitch/Johanna: probending match (for Worldwithinworld)

“Oh hey, did you see who took out that Ferretbat with a well-timed fire lash—that would be yours truly, so you can thank me at any time, Haymitch?”

“Shut up, Johanna, and let me look at that leg,” Haymitch said, already gathering the water around his fingers to help heal what she knew would be a deep bruise from where the Ferretbat’s earthbender had pounded her hard.

She tugged up the leg of her uniform trousers and let him go to work, and she thought about how different it felt when he touched her skin without the excuse of healing, without the cushion of water in the way. Finnick, sensible, patient, reliable earthbending Finnick who kept the entire team steady and grounded already had his Annie so there was no jealousy, and there were times she was still amazed that a moody waterbender and a snappish firebender somehow became something more than the lost souls they’d been before.

It didn’t hurt that the Mountain Mining Mockingjays were on top of the league again this year.

(A/N: ATLA/THG crossover. The opposing team's full name is the Foofoocuddlypoops Pet Supply Ferretbats)


	22. Haymitch/Johanna: snowed in (for Briarrose)

When Haymitch pushed himself up off the mattress at the light hitting his closed eyes, grunting in irritation, he looked over to see Johanna with the curtain drawn aside, peering out into the December morning. He couldn’t see more flakes drifting down, so the snow that had begun shortly after lunch yesterday must have finally stopped.

"I’d say it’s almost a foot down," she said.

"Joy," he grumbled, padding over to stand beside her, looking at the undisturbed white-blanketed world out there, morning sunlight glinting off the snow. He shrugged. "Nothing to be done for it. At least we’ve got food and firewood, and it’s only next door for the kids to slog over here for a hot meal."

"Aren’t we grateful it’s their day to come over here?"

"Couldn’t have planned it better," he assured her dryly.

"Hey, I know, we could go make a snowman and sing merrily to each other as we do it," she looked back over her shoulder and smirked at him.

He rolled his eyes. ”Are you seriously taking ideas from Splendor in the Mines?” Fucking Capitol movies. Like any Twelve miner would waste warm clothing, a days’ allotment of coal, and a perfectly good carrot by sticking it in a heap of snow. Like any Twelve miner had possessed any extra time and energy for that anyway. ”Besides, I know you. You won’t be putting that carrot on the face. And you’ll probably build a snow-lady too, with impressive snow-tits.”

"Oh, my, what if Kittycat were to see that and be horrified?" Yeah, he figured that had been her plan all along, but as he pictured it, he couldn’t help but laugh.

Taking her hand in his, he pulled her back towards the bed, wanting to get there before the warmth in the sheets had dissipated. ”C’mon. Kids won’t be over until dinner. And staying in bed all day keeps us from burning more firewood, you know.” 

"You know I get all randy when you talk practical to me."

"Well, then here’s another piece of useful advice." He pulled the blankets back over them both. "Body heat transfers best when you’re naked."


	23. Effie/Plutarch: after the war is over (for Anon)

Two months after the spectacle of the “trial of the century”, he found her working in a nightclub near Silver Downs. Well, "found" implied he’d been looking, and he’d given up hope of that. She’d vanished suddenly and completely in the way that people who didn’t want to be found employed. 

But as a waitress served him another drink, which he suspected was probably 80 percent water, as nobody knew when more alcohol might actually be available, he saw her three tables over, scrubbing the sticky tabletop. 

Had he not seen her as a prisoner when she was brought out of the Detention Center, drably dressed and scrubbed clean, he might not have recognized her. Light brown hair pulled back into a plain ponytail—black skirt, white blouse, utterly sensible shoes. Tired blue eyes.

The victors had endured the worst for all those years. Nobody could question that, and it seemed like most people still kept the aura of respectful distance in the way of something being confronted with someone they could never understand. But the war had produced more than its share of damaged human flotsam all the same.

"Send her to my table, will you?" he asked his waitress, slipping her a generous tip and nodding to Effie.

"If you’re looking for company tonight…" 

"I’m not," he cut her off with a wave of his hand. 

She came over and immediately recognized him. Her spine stiffened and her chin lifted in a way that told him she would play her role, and play it well. He had to admire that a spark of pride remained in her—too many people had forgotten pride, laughter, everything else. Much as they accused him of inanity in trying to put together new shows on the television, he knew one thing: people had to remember how to laugh and enjoy things, or else this grim grey world wasn’t worth the war it had taken to win it. _Hope is dangerous when not controlled_ , Coriolanus Snow had said. Power-hungry bastard, but he’d been no fool. ”Well, Plutarch, it’s been quite some time, hasn’t it?” she said, as if they were at some society function and she was the gracious hostess.

"Now what are you doing in a place like this?"

She shrugged slightly. ”Maintaining useful employment. It’s difficult for someone who was a collaborator in the Games to find any manner of trust, you know.”

He knew that. He knew just how hard he’d had to fight Coin to keep Effie Trinket’s neck out of a noose, because he knew Katniss and Peeta were so fond of her. Privately he’d admit that it was only Haymitch adding weight to the argument that did it, because if one of the Capitol’s most traumatized victims could plead that justice wouldn’t be served by killing her, that was powerful. 

_What, do you love her or something that you’re so desperate to save her?_

_What? Fuck no. You try Mentor Central rather than Central Command for twenty-five years and see how quick you are to condemn anyone to die, Heavensbee. She’s annoying as hell but she loves those kids and they love her. You think Katniss ain’t lost enough already?_

But that was Haymitch. He knew the man still hated him a bit for the Quarter Quell and the deaths in the arena, even as he’d objectively admit it had been the only way. He didn’t even seem to realize Plutarch had tried to spare the victors the pain of killing each other as much as possible after the starting gong by letting the arena do all the work. Or more likely, being Haymitch Abernathy, he knew it full well but he just didn’t want to acknowledge it. “Of course.” It wasn’t written into law or anything, but he knew most places that potential employees had to prove a lack of association with the Games before getting a job. Businesses didn’t want the risk of scandal if one of their workers should later be arrested. ”So,” he said, leaning back in his chair, “I’m starting this new show.”

"Your last one wasn’t very well received."

Too soon for a singing competition, apparently, with the echoes of Katniss Everdeen. He’d misjudged his audience. Maybe if Katniss had come on…but she was in Twelve and neither she nor Haymitch were answering their phones. ”Try and try again and learn from it,” he told her lightly, picking up his glass and taking a sip. Yes, it was mostly water. ”I need a production assistant. You’re clearly very efficient and organized. Are you interested?”

He could see the hunger in her eyes for a moment at the idea of being involved in something grand and fun. ”Why are you offering me that kind of opportunity?”

"Because I have enough clout with President Paylor that I can risk any backlash. Because it’s a new world and that means a new chance, doesn’t it?" Petty, vindictive, and spiteful had ruled for too long already. Their Mockingjay had gone silent. Things had to change now in a demonstrable way, and Effie Trinket just might do that. "And your skills are meant for better than just hoping for tips and peddling watered-down drinks." Because she still had that same weary, beaten look in her eyes that she’d had on release from prison, and he wanted to see if she too could remember how to laugh. Also, frankly he didn’t want to be the one to tell Katniss Everdeen that Effie had gone under, having found where she’d been hiding.


	24. Haymitch/Johanna: skates, roller derby (for Anon)

Pivot’s stripe on her helmet, she helped arrange the wall, and heard someone—Little Mermayhem, maybe—yelling from the bench, “Fuck yeah, kill her, Lizzie!” That was her right now, terrifying badass Lizzie Blockin’, as in _Lizzie Blockin’ formed the pack, and gave their jammer forty smacks_. People loved it. Fuck, she didn't want to remember what it had been like before she laced up a pair of skates and learned how she could be fierce and aggressive out on that track, and people _loved her_ for it.

She glanced back over her shoulder at Mockingslay on the jam line, meeting her teammate’s grey eyes and nodding. Yeah, she had it. They’d get Slay on through. Girl was like an arrow anyway, always going right to the target, precise and swift.

She pushed off with the whistle, jostling and creating a space for Slay to slip on through, keeping an eye for the gold-starred helmet of the other team’s jammer. Slay danced on through the tiny openings they created for her, moving as ever like her skates were on fire, and she was gone, starting her lap around the track.

It was satisfying as hell to hit Pearl Jammer again and watch her go heels-over-ass outside the boundary the track with her flyaway pink curls and her mouth an O of astonishment in her wildly painted face. 

Suddenly she got slammed in the back and ended up in a heap with someone on top of her. She heard the whistle and the gruff voice announcing, “1, White, back block” even as she picked herself up.

Blond pretty Cashmere If You Can scowled but started for the penalty box, and turning back to the action as Slay came back around to start her scoring pass, jumping and ducking her way past the first blocker, the only sight she had of the head ref was the “Gin and Bear It” nameplate on his back. 

After the bout, out in the parking lot, she smirked at him and sidled over, now that he was Haymitch rather than Gin, and she was Johanna rather than Lizzie. Now she could sass him all she wanted, or flirt, or anything, whereas on the track, it was all strictly neutral, no favoritism. ”Was that you protecting your girlfriend, sweetie?”

"I sent you to the box twice yourself, darlin’" he observed dryly, slinging his gear bag over his shoulder.

"Afterparty tonight?" She knew reffing was part of what had helped him get out of the bottle for good. Everyone in derby had their story, and all too often it was a story of finding some kind of hope or power again. Happened to her too—pissed off at the world and all alone, she’d found a family again and a way to not have to pretend she wasn’t angry sometimes, but instead a way to take it out safely. Lucky her. Haymitch didn’t get to hit people. Though she thought as a head ref, looking out for the skaters, making sure the bout was safe and nobody pulled any dirty tricks, satisfied him more than hitting the shit out of people ever would. He was an EMT, after all.

But being at a party where alcohol was served and sticking to a Coke—sometimes he could manage it. Sometimes it had been a bad day and he knew the temptation would be pure frustration and he declined. Nobody on the team blamed him for that.

"Think I’m bowing out."

"Bad day?" They hadn’t had time to talk about it beforehand. She knew he’d barely arrived in time to get his gear on.

His silent look said it all. It had been a bad one, and she knew he wouldn’t sleep well tonight either. ”You go on and go, though, if you want,” he said finally. ”You won, got something to celebrate for sure.”

She thought about it for a minute, then reached up and tousled his sweat-damp black curls. The women of the team were one good thing in her life, but he was another, and he needed her more right now. ”No. Let’s make it a night in. I’ll text Mayhem and tell her I’m not coming.” The team would absolutely be laughing and joking about how she couldn’t wait to get her boyfriend home. Assholes…but she was smiling as she thought it.

He gave her a wry smile, slinging an arm around her shoulders as they headed out into the night, leaning in to kiss her lips briefly. She always liked that he was a man who really didn’t give a shit that she smelled of sweat and pad funk. ”So long as we don’t watch Whip It again, for Chrissakes.”

(A/N: Johanna is Lizzie Blockin', Haymitch is Gin and Bear It, Cashmere is Cashmere If You Can, Katniss is Mockingslay, Effie is Pearl Jammer, and Annie is Little Mermayhem.)


	25. Haymitch/Johanna: more derby/EMTverse (for Districtunrest and Theboyfallsfromthesky)

Finally she started to feel more than just Haymitch’s ride-along, watching him handle everything competently and patiently while she struggled to find a vein or forgot to put the earpieces of her stethoscope in. The old geezers usually called her a “little gal like you.” Considering she was no ninety-pounds-soaking-wet wonder, she thought wryly they were just comparing her to the husky linebackers they expected to be carrying the gurney. She’d admit it was a struggle sometimes with the gurney, her shoulders and chest and lungs burning as they descended several flights of stairs in buildings that had never even heard the idea of elevators. But be damned before she’d admit it to the patients, let alone to Haymitch.

She was starting to get into the cycle, though—the rush of a save, the low of losing someone en route. Only the doctor could officially pronounce death, but she’d had them slip away from underneath her fingers all the same. And of course, there was no hope for some even by the time they got there.

They usually went and got some food at the end of shift. Not like either of them had a family or a lover urging them to hurry right home. So dawdling with him became a habit, and she suspected he took some pleasure in having company himself. His old partner Chaff had a wife and kids and sounded like he usually booked it right after he was off the clock.

Some people might think it strange to be chowing down waffles and talking about hockey or books after watching someone flatline. But the only way to cope was to find a way to let it go and be ready to do it all over again, and keep fighting for the ones that could be saved. Food, and anything else but the job, was a way to continued sanity.

So when she teased him flippantly, “What do you do in your off-time, anyway? Watch ‘30’s horror flicks? Collect ceramic unicorns?” she wasn’t sure what answer she’d get. He seemed too smart by half to not have something to occupy that mind in his idle hours, but nothing she could imagine seemed to fit. She couldn’t imagine him playing jazz trumpet or making artisanal cheeses or whatever.

“I referee for roller derby,” he said casually, in between bites of his pecan praline pancakes. Breakfast at all hours—her kind of joint.

“You referee for what? You mean, like Whip…” She had visions of girls prancing around in trashy cowgirl outfits and Catholic schoolgirl uniforms. Much as it seemed like it was a kickass hobby, it also seemed like it was some guy’s wet dream—a bunch of barely dressed women on skates fighting each other.

He groaned, interrupting her. “It got some things right but that movie was exaggerated. I thought the same, but then they needed volunteer EMTs for their bout and I had nothing better to do that night.” Considering the number of bloody noses and ankle injuries and the like that Whip It seemed to imply happened, Johanna wasn’t surprised. “Liked what I saw—“

“Oh, I bet you did,” she said with a snort into her coffee. “So that’s your hobby? You like getting up close and personal with a bunch of chicks doing WWE on skates?” It seemed disappointingly mundane for him. Then again, he was a West Virginia coal country hillbilly by birth, complete with the mountain twang still intact. Maybe his roots were showing.

“Shush,” he said, making a gesture like swatting a pesky buzzing fly. “You come check it out, then, Miss Skeptic. You’ll see. They’ve got a bout this weekend against Granite City.” He smirked at her over the rim of his cup. “You watch that entire bout and you ain’t champing at the bit to try out with them? Next week’s meals are all on me. 

“Oh, then fuck this whole greasy spoon thing. We’ll be eating first-class steakhouse dinners.” She could almost taste that ribeye—medium, juicy, tender.

Going to the hockey rink that Saturday night, she bought her ticket and passed by a bunch of girls in their black jerseys advertising they were part of the Shenandoah Sirens. Surprisingly, once the two teams were out on the floor, while there were a couple in tights, most of them seemed to favor gym capris and leggings. Some tattoos and hair dye and face paint, but others were as clean-scrubbed as Sunday school teachers. Big and skinny, tall and short, college kids to middle-aged moms, wild and understated—there seemed to be every kind of woman possible out there.

There also was no ramp-like thing like she’d seen in the movie—instead, they had taped out the lines of the track on the floor. The Granite City team, in their red jerseys, were bigger, but no less diverse in their types, or their colorful names. Four Leaf Clov’er. Lyme Dizzyeze. Booty Salon. Jammerjay. Cinnamon Toast Punch. Doomcake. Your Mom.

She spied Haymitch as he headed for the center of the track, dressed in a black and white striped referee’s shirt, the same kind of wristguards, knee and elbow pads, and helmet as the women. He had a caduceus sticker on one side of his helmet, alongside another one inviting people to Give Blood, Play Derby. When he turned his back she could see the nameplate labeling him as Gin and Bear It. Knowing his history as she did, given he’d matter-of-factly admitted his struggles with alcoholism dating back to his firefighter days, she couldn’t help but appreciate his black humor in so drolly owning it.

Then the bout started and quickly she couldn’t look away. Speed, hard hits, precision, women leaping nimbly around the track like they were in sneakers rather than on eight wheels. There were no fistfights and no theatrics, although people did get sent to the penalty box now and again by Haymitch or the other refs. But nobody screwed around out there. They took it serious as anything she’d ever seen, tough and athletic and physical, glistening with sweat and not caring. Everything that a woman wasn’t supposed to be, they laughed at and did it anyway. People had told her maybe she should play golf to deal with her stress and anger. Fucking golf, like hitting a little ball out into the woods by herself did anything for her? She’d wanted to hit somebody even more after a round of golf. 

Suddenly, she wanted to do this. She wanted to be out there on skates, dealing out the hits and scoring the points, feeling the adrenaline rush and making no apologies, working with these people who belonged, who worked together as a smooth, well-oiled unit and obviously loved each other too, because they enthusiastically yelled each other’s bizarre alter egos—what the hell was Mayhem? Thrill? Woody?—without any self-consciousness and greeted teammates on return to the bench with a fist-bump or maybe even an ass-tap. 

This felt like everything she’d been missing. So when she found Haymitch after the bout, seeing him come up to her with that knowing smirk and a whiff of a weird funky smell like old gym socks as he drawled, “Well, now?” she couldn’t even regret paying for a week’s worth of meals.

This was what she’d needed and they’d barely worked together six weeks now, but already he showed he understood her well enough to get her to come here. That was well worth covering some meal checks. “Shut up. When do I try out?”

He chuckled softly and called, “Hey, Mayhem! I’ve got some fresh meat for you!” Little Mermayhem, as her jersey and the announcer had proclaimed was a tall slender girl with long dark hair who’d been wearing the jammer’s star on her helmet most of the time she was on the track. The name also made total sense of the green fish-scale print leggings she wore. Mayhem turned and walked over. 

“Thanks, Gin,” she acknowledged Haymitch, but her attention was on Johanna. “Little Mermayhem, but call me Mayhem,” she introduced herself without any hesitation as she held out her hand—also smelling of that gym-sock funk. It must have been the wrist guards, Johanna decided. “I help coach the fresh meat—the new skaters.” 

“Johanna,” she said, shaking Mayhem’s hand, trying to ignore Haymitch’s continued smirk. “I don’t have a fun name. Sorry.” It was pure instinct that she said it flippantly. 

“Oh, you’ll have to earn that,” Mayhem said, and there was no surer thing to incite Johanna than the air of a challenge. “But give you that time to get your skills, and you’ll figure out some things about who you really are. That’ll help you choose.”


	26. Haymitch: THG Daemon crossover with "His Dark Materials" (for Anon)

By the time they drew his name on Reaping Day, Wybren had settled as a ferret for three years. At the sound of his name, she curled up tight on his shoulders as he walked towards the stage, murmuring in his ear as if to comfort him.

As he said goodbye to Briar, her fox daemon Cadno gave a small yip that sounded like grief and nuzzled Wybren. He tried to not remember days out in the forest with Briar and Cadno, because he couldn’t bear to think of everything he would soon lose.

In the arena, Maysilee’s Aderyn helped keep watch from up in the trees, trilling a warning when he spotted any trouble ahead. Daemon and girl alike fell to the pink bird mutts, and he missed the industrious, clever sparrow as much as he missed the industrious, clever girl that final night in the arena. 

When he woke up in the hospital, rather than feeling the comforting warmth of Bren’s sinuous, silky-furred body curled up on his pillow, he was alone and so he panicked.

"She’s right there," the doctor said cheerfully, pointing up towards the head of the bed. Turning over onto an elbow, trying to not jostle his still-aching midsection, he saw her sitting there. Dark feathers, striated dark and light on her legs and belly—keen black eyes, sharp beak and sharp talons. "She finally settled again. Peregrine falcon, if I don’t miss my guess," Doctor Sixleigh went on. "What a beauty she is now!"

"She was always beautiful," he said thickly, looking at Bren huddled up miserably in a cloud of feathers. 

During his victory interview, Caesar and Claudius, as usual, wanted to analyze the new form of the victor’s daemon and what it said about them. _Well, the peregrine is one of the swiftest and most agile and cunning of the raptors, even if not the largest, and we certainly saw all of that from Haymitch in the arena, didn’t we! [cue audience laughter]_

"I’m sorry." She didn’t speak to him until they were on the train home when she finally seemed to rouse herself from the shock of it all. "I know I’m not what you.."

"Oh, Bren," he said, unable to help reaching out for her, letting her gingerly climb on his arm. She would have scuttled right up to his shoulders before like a streak of quicksilver, but no longer. "You couldn’t help it—I did it to you." He’d made her change. He’d taken lives in there, and he hadn’t come out the same, so of course she’d shifted. Everybody knew that a victor almost never went home with the same daemon.

"Guess we’ve both got adjustments to make. Yours just don’t show, Haymitch."

"No. Not on the outside." But everyone would know he was different by looking at Bren.

Then she let out a horrified cree as she saw that even the lightest brush of those razor-sharp talons had gouged bloody marks on his forearm. ”Don’t worry about it,” he told her. ”We’ll adjust.” 

She couldn’t snuggle up to him quite as she used to as a ferret, but that cruelly sharp beak was gentle as she leaned down from her perch on the rail of the headboard and softly ruffled his hair.

They went home and the differences were made sharp immediately. Twelve was full of daemons that liked a good tunnel or burrow: badgers, moles, weasels, badgers, ferrets, hares, foxes, terriers, and the like. Good miners’ daemons that could go deep underground with their humans and not suffer from it.

So back he came now, this Seam boy with his new daemon, the falcon meant for wide open skies and making a swift and sure strike at its prey. No surer way to broadcast that he had a killer’s daemon now, not a miner’s. He saw people staring and felt their awkward silence.

He could feel that distance starting already and he didn’t know how to fix it. He couldn’t change Bren back any more than he could change himself. Might as well try to get on with it as best he could. So he ordered a new leather coat so Bren could ride on his arm or shoulders without fear of wounding him, and built her a perch for in his bedroom, and he took her to the Meadow and let her fly, at least as far as she could before their bond tugged her back.

It was coming back from just such a day at the Meadow that he smelled smoke and saw the old Seam house burning, and the boy’s scream mingled with the falcon’s shriek as they both knew that even more now, nothing would ever, ever be the same.


	27. District Four Victors: farewell to Mags in the tribute morgue (for Anon)

They’d known it was inevitable, Mags had even made it clear, but that made it no easier. Carrick had arrived just in time for change of shift with Annie—just in time to see Mags die at the paws and fangs of the white bear mutt. She’d stood tall and proud till the end, but one old woman was no match for that. Even at seventeen and armed with a harpoon, she’d barely survived that thing.

"She’ll be coming in soon," Annie murmured, though he could see her watching the screen where even now, Haymitch, Finnick, and Katniss rested on the beach, recovering from wounds both physical and psychological.

"Yes." He shook his head tiredly. Twenty-four years Carrick Weston had mentored before Finnick Odair came and took his place, in Mentor Central and as fresh bait for those who wanted a victor’s body. Convenient too for them too, since Gloss only filled a certain niche and Haymitch was finally ageing out—though his increasing drinking helped lower interest as well.

Twenty-four years of sewing up bodies down in the tribute morgue and seeing all sorts of gruesome wounds told him that there was nothing more to be done for Mags. It would be a closed casket. ”The best we can do,” he said carefully, “is carry on what she would have wanted.” He nodded slightly over towards Peeta, still fumbling with the controls at his mentor station. In spite of himself Carrick couldn’t help but remember Haymitch at seventeen, equally lost.

"We should say goodbye to her," Annie argued back, her green eyes flashing. No tears.

She was right at that. Mags deserved at least a few minutes with the people who’d loved her, before he signed the form for the sealed casket, ready to ship back to Four. ”All right.” He glanced around, seeing who might be available. It was easier given that they had an alliance including their “neighbors” at the mentor consoles, Three. ”Luma, can you cover for a few minutes? We’re going downstairs. For Mags.” Nobody ever spoke the word morgue. It was always downstairs.

Luma Appenheim won three years before him. She’d been around more than long enough to know and respect Mags. ”Sure, I’ve got you covered,” she responded quietly, leaving Spark to cover Beetee and Wiress at the Three station.

Suddenly Peeta was there too, obviously divining where they were headed. ”Haymitch mentioned that there’s the…morgue.”

Dazen let out a hiss of appalled horror from his seat at the Five console, his deep olive skin suddenly paling. ”It’s downstairs, boy,” he urged Peeta. ”We don’t say the other.”

"Downstairs," Peeta corrected himself, giving an apologetic glance. "I…want to help."

"Not much to help," Carrick said wearily.

"Then I want to say goodbye," Peeta told him quietly. "Because she died to help Katniss and Haymitch as much as Finnick. I owe it to her."

Mags had reported approvingly on this boy after the meeting where Haymitch recruited them all for this rebellion, saying that he had his head on straight and saw people honestly. Carrick was inclined to agree with that assessment—Peeta saw clearly enough. ”Then here’s another lesson. You’re leaving, you get someone to cover you.” Not that any action was expected, and a mentor was pretty much a helpless observer for almost everything in that arena. But someone had to answer the phone from a sponsor or the like.

Old Cotton from Eleven agreed to stick around a few minutes extra and handle Peeta’s station. Carrick had the feeling that like last night with Woof, there would be a steady procession downstairs for visitation for Mags, with victors coming to say their goodbyes. Most of the mentors this year were of the older generations that had been drawn into the victor circle by Woof and Mags, before age caught up with both of them in the last ten or fifteen years.

In the morgue, he tried to not look at the other covered bodies on their slabs, knowing each of them by name, and many of them by memories he had of interacting with them. Mags was bad enough. He uncovered her face, which mercifully had survived mostly intact. No point looking at the rest.

Peeta kept a respectful distance. Apparently he understood this too: he wasn’t Four and he didn’t have the right to handle her like this, unless they asked for his help. He liked the boy, but Peeta wasn’t quite a victor among other victors. He and Katniss were both lucky ones. They’d come out of the arena with a partner. They’d escaped the burden of years and years of mentoring with barely any hope, and they’d escaped people paying for his body. It had been Mags that was the family-maker, not him, and at this point, watching so many die in the arena for the sake of Katniss and the rebellion, he was too tired and heartsick to make the effort.

"Thank you," Peeta said. Carrick was pretty sure he spoke to Mags. "I said I wouldn’t forget. I won’t." Then he nodded. "I’ll leave you two alone." 

They took the time to wash the blood from Mags’ face and hair, and carefully braid that long grey hair again. Nobody would ever see it, least of all Mags’ family. But they would know they had done it and seen to her properly as they could.

As he came back upstairs with Annie and formally took over the shift, Carrick glanced towards Peeta, seated at his station again, and wondered just who would look after Haymitch’s body if he were killed in that arena. He sensed there would be no shortage of volunteers—except for the youngest victors that didn’t know their place and who’d only met him at his lowest, most everyone liked Haymitch Abernathy and how he’d looked after the other victors,regardless of their district.

It seemed to him that for years, Haymitch had belonged to all of them far more than he did to Twelve. Though mostly he just hoped it wouldn’t become an issue, just as he hoped he wouldn’t have to go downstairs again to prepare Finnick’s body, given that Finnick was his one save before his retirement as a mentor. No, he wasn’t going to let Finnick go that easy, and not just for Annie’s sake.


	28. Haymitch/Katniss (for Anon)

Haymitch glanced up at the sound of the front door banging shut. ”You’d think in almost ten years you’d have learned to knock like everyone else,” he called, rolling his eyes. Only one person ever apparently felt like she could just stroll into his house uninvited, and he’d admit that he was defensive of this space—it was the only place he’d had to hide away in for all those years.

Katniss came into the living room, standing there with her arms folded. ”What, I forgot something when I was over for dinner?” Haymitch asked in confusion. ”I said ‘Happy Birthday’ and all.”

"I don’t think Peeta and me are right for each other." No preamble, just cutting right to the chase, though he saw her nervously chewing at her lower lip, just as she had back when she was a kid.

Staring, he wasn’t sure he’d heard her right. ”I miss you two having a knock-down fight or something?” But much as he hadn’t said anything, he’d noticed a slight tension there lately.

She moved into the room with her lithe grace and sat down on a chair, elbows resting on her knees as she leaned in like confiding some particularly dark secret ”He’s had this exact same vision of his perfect family since he was five. Marrying me and having kids and baking cookies for them when they head off to kindergarten, Haymitch. But…I don’t think I can give him that. I don’t think that I even want kids.”

"You don’t want ‘em or you’re afraid to have ‘em?" he asked.

"Maybe both." She shrugged. "But I can’t think about it with him there just always waiting and wanting it so much. The pressure of it…”

"Sweetheart," he said, sitting back in his chair with a sigh, "not much I can say for solid advice here. Ain’t a business I’ve ever had concern about myself. On my twenty-fifth birthday? I was busy wondering what two kids would be dying this year and trying to come up with some nice new whore-tricks to keep my patrons happy." She flinched a little at that, but he figured she’d be better off talking to anyone else than a man of forty-nine whose only relationship had been years before she was even born. 

"Oh, come on, you’ve never held back on advice before, even when I didn’t want it,” Katniss snapped.

"Cards on the table? Fine. You two did each other a lot of good these last years. You needed each other after the war."

Katniss gave a guttural laugh, laced through with pain. ”He was the one thing that saved me. Took us long enough to finally grow together, it seems like that ought to have paid enough for it to last forever.”

“Life ain’t fair, sweetheart. Trouble is you’re not seventeen anymore. You’ve both grown since then. I’ve seen it. And anything that can grow together, can grow apart too,” he told her bluntly. ”If you’re taking different roads here, then that’s that. But that’s your call, not mine.”

"I still love him, though."

"Of course you do. You think you just shut the feelings off, even if it’s over?" He shook his head. On that, he did have some experience.

She glanced over at him, grey eyes on his. ”You still love her, don’t you?”

"Yeah." He was thankful she didn’t remind him of Briar, as she sat there looking at him with those Seam eyes. "Always will. But I know it’s over. And at least with you, you’d get the choice to end it."

Standing, she nodded once, decisively. He caught a whiff of her lemon-and-herb soap. ”I’ll think about it.”

"Do that. Tell the boy he needs to back off and let you decide for yourself. Or I can tell him." Maybe Peeta didn’t mean to put the pressure on, but apparently it was there nonetheless, maybe simply by Katniss knowing how much he wanted it.

"Thanks, Haymitch," she said softly. She pressed his shoulder with her hand as she took her leave. "At least I can be honest with you." Something like actual gratitude in her tone there, he noted.


	29. Johanna + Effie: architecture and design (for Worldwithinworld)

Grumbling at the slateboard in her office, Johanna erased another line, grateful that Haymitch had been thoughtful enough four years ago to hang the damn thing out of the reach of small children. Walt and June would have probably erased her math and her designs and covered them with pictures of dogs. Not that she didn’t love their drawings, just didn’t need to lose her own work to it. Standing back, she pondered it again. ”Shit,” she muttered under her breath. Something about it just didn’t sit right. She knew how to build the damn thing and calculate the loadbearing and the materials and everything, but this was the first big project she’d been called to help design, at least something more utilitarian than a school or the like. It looked like a damn stack of boxes.

"Have you seen Haymitch, Johanna dear, it’s imperative…” She turned as she heard Effie’s voice. Obviously Effie was in a rush too, since her usually neatly-styled light brown hair was pulled back in a simple bun.

"Trouble?" she said.

But Effie had seen the slateboard. ”Oh, is that part of your submission for the new Capitol building?”

"Yes," Johanna admitted reluctantly, scowling at it with the angry look that, in the past, would have intimidated any animate object. Unfortunately, architectural sketches didn’t fall into that category. "It’s total shit. It’s a box."

"What do you want to see in a seat of government?"

"Nothing in imposing granite, please," she muttered. "We’ve had enough prisons, thanks." She could get away with that wry jest with Effie, given they’d both endured the Detention Center. 

"You’re thinking only about how to build this thing, aren’t you?” Effie scolded her, lips pursed into a moue of impatience. ”This is meant to be something timeless! You have to first think about why. Find inspiration and the details will come later!”

Spoken like an artist, Johanna thought wryly, but she found herself handing Effie the chalk. The woman designed fashions along with Cinna, maybe she had an idea or two. Soon enough the two of them were bickering back and forth, Johanna firmly rejecting frills and avant garde ideas, Effie arguing right back every time Johanna started to mutter about materials and physics. 

Haymitch poked his head in just as they were having a heated argument about the merits of dome shapes. ”Does this need a referee?” he asked them dryly.

"Is it that late already?" Haymitch was home from the Justice Building, and that meant it was late afternoon at least.

"I’d better get home, Cinna will wonder where I’ve been," Effie said, thought she paused long enough to say to Haymitch sternly, "but don’t think I won’t be back tomorrow to talk about the garment workers’ union!"

"Of course you will." Johanna turned them out as she looked at the design, admiring the elegant and clean lines of it. It would need more work, but she could admit she was coming at it all wrong to begin. So maybe Effie knew a thing or two.


	30. Posy+Johanna: Amuse Me (for Mathgirl24)

"Miz Jo Hanna?" Johanna glanced up to see Posy standing there, regarding her out of hopeful dark grey eyes. As ever, she said Johanna’s name like it was two separate ones.

She put down the architecture book she’d been reading, still trying to wrap her head around the differences in framing with metal rather than timber. ”Yep?”

The words came out in a rush. ”Rory says that Ma says that we should be nice to Mister Haymitch because he’s our uncle ‘cause he was gonna marry our auntie but she went away like Gale did a long time ago and he was really sad but now he’s not and now you’re married to Uncle Haymitch so does that mean you’re my auntie?”

She ended up staring, wondering just how the hell anyone, especially a kid that little, could deliver a speech that rapidfire without even seeming to need a breath. ”He was going to marry your Aunt Briar, yeah,” she said slowly. ”But yeah, she…went away.” Trying to explain death to a six-year-old was a bit much. How the hell they’d ever explain things like the Games and how Briar Wainwright had been executed for loving a boy who’d been too clever for Coriolanus Snow was beyond her.

"But are you my auntie?" Posy insisted.

She looked at her and thought _She’s been lonely too._ Johanna had lost everyone too, but at least she’d been older. For Posy, her mother and father’s siblings both died young courtesy of the Capitol. Her father died before she was born. She’d lost a brother. Along with a potential stepfather, the prospect of now suddenly having an aunt and uncle probably enthralled her. ”Yeah. Suppose I am.” Seeing Posy reach out to her, without fear or any guile, she told herself that to hesitate would only hurt an innocent kid. 

So she let herself take that hug and a give one in return. ”Thanks, Auntie Jo Hanna,” Posy said as she gave her a smile with all the warmth of the sun that people in Thirteen never saw, one that this steel trap apparently couldn’t touch.

(A/N: Call it an AFAF outtake)


	31. Haymitch+Plutarch: Effie on her release from prison, setup for Plutarch/Effie (for Allies-person)

"They found her in the Detention Center," Plutarch said, looking at the thin figure with straggling light brown hair. "They said that the rebels were…rough on her. Recognized her from television as a Games escort and they weren’t happy."

Haymitch let out a soft sound at that, looking through the observation window as well. ”Yeah, I’ve heard about the reprisals.” He gave a icy smile. ”And that our new president ain’t doing much to stop ‘em. We missed her,” he muttered. ”Probably ‘cause she was held separate from the rest.”

Plutarch though it was equally likely that Haymitch had never even thought that Effie Trinket might be arrested, and that he hadn’t thought that much about her during the war. Even now, his focus was all on Katniss, Peeta, Johanna, Annie—the other victors and their various griefs and wounds. It had been Plutarch that had found Effie. Haymitch had made no secret over the years that Plutarch himself had been a mentor aide, and then a junior Gamemaker, that he hated the escorts for Twelve—first Honoria Delight, then Effie Trinket. However much he must have loathed the escorts, there was no sign of pleasure in him now at the huddled figure on the prison cot, drab and tired. “How rough were they?” Haymitch said finally.

"Do you really want…"

"Fuck you, Heavensbee, you think there’s anything I can’t hear?" Haymitch demanded roughly. "I’ve had it all done to me over the years.”

True. ”They beat her.” The vivid bruises on Effie’s face, tones of blue and purple as bright as her former makeup, said that at least one person had struck her. She had broken ribs as well. ”Insulted her. They didn’t…”

"They didn’t ‘interfere’ with her?" Haymitch said sarcastically, giving the word a Capitol accent. "Oh, I’m sure they would have, given half the chance." That horribly blank smile of his came back, his eyes glittering bright and a little wild. "Nothing like that to show someone just how powerless you are to them."

"The guards in the Detention Center may have. I don’t know. Right now, what matters is that Coin’s going to want to execute her."

Haymitch looked at her again, silent. Scratched his chin, folded his arms over his chest. Sighed. ”She’s a pain in the ass, I’ll be honest. But the kids love her, and she loves them. They’ve both lost too many people already.” Plutarch had already heard about Peeta’s family, and Primrose Everdeen had been national news for days while Katniss and Peeta recuperated. ”I won’t say she was exactly wearing our colors, mind, but…she was waking up. She was far from the worst. I like to think she’d have gotten wise to the full reality eventually, now that it had started sinking in. And shit, if we start hanging everyone in the Capitol, it’s never gonna end.”

Plutarch couldn’t help a sigh of relief. ”That’s something.” True, his word as a leader of the rebellion would mean something, but so many years in the Capitol meant Alma Coin considered him “tainted”. A call for mercy for a Games employee would mean far more coming from someone the Capitol had actively victimized. ”So you’ll speak up to keep her alive?”

Haymitch turned his head away from the observation window, glancing over at Plutarch. He shook his head, looking suddenly about a hundred years old, utterly soul-weary. ”Hasn’t there been more than enough blood already?”

He forgot sometimes how soft Haymitch was, beneath all his pretense of bluster and sarcasm. But of all people out there, this was the best possible ally. If Haymitch Abernathy was one someone’s side, he would never quit. He’d happily bend or break the rules if need be to make it happen. ”I’ll see what I can do to get her released to medical.”

"I’ll go too." He shrugged awkwardly. "Might as well throw my weight behind it. Nothing more I can do today for the kids," he admitted. "At least if Effie’s all right I can give ‘em a little bit of good news when they do wake up."


	32. Haymitch/Johanna: danger ahead (for jeanmerilynsimmons)

Coming up on December now in the mountains, the winds blew raw around the jagged granite peaks piercing the sky. Last night they’d blown hard enough to lash the falling snow into hard pellets of ice that stung as they hit the skin. Right now it was much better, only a few drifting flakes here and there, immediately dissipating as they hit the gravel. For as little real fighting as they did the cold still seemed to sap something out of them. She woke up tired most mornings. 

All of them were bundled up in their uniform overcoats and crouched around the radiating heat of the space heater. Looking at Finnick, sitting there and talking to Samara Leeg, she knew this evening, as usual, he’d desperately plead with the brass to let him call Thirteen and talk to Annie. They hadn’t let him do it yet, and he got more agitated every night. Then there was Katniss and Peeta huddled together too, talking in low voices, glancing anxiously down into the valley and the spires of the Capitol every now and again.

They had something to lose and it might cost them in the fight ahead. They had a distraction. Finnick’s mind and heart stayed half with Annie and Katniss and Peeta would be thinking of each other first. She tried to tell herself that her entire will was towards Snow’s throat under her hands—finally within grasp now—and the roaring flames of the demanded vengeance she’d burned to have for years.

She’d lived for this ever since Snow killed her family as a lesson before he pimped her out. Part of her rejoiced in it, knowing the noose was tightening and she’d see Snow pay. And yet her eyes and her thoughts strayed. 

Haymitch crouched down beside Boggs, collars turned up against the cold, the two of them talking intensely about something that they obviously didn’t want the others to hear, gloved hands waving now and again in demonstration or emphasis. From the looks of it, Haymitch was getting more emphatic and Boggs more stubborn, from how he kept shaking his head. Scheming, probably—that was Haymitch on his game, trying to think five steps ahead. 

None of them was exactly glamorous in the drab grey field uniforms and wool overcoats, black knit caps and leather shooting gloves on against the chill. The men also hadn’t shaved in days and Haymitch’s dark scurf of stubble gave him a scruffy look. Even Finnick’s polished looks were looking a bit ragged. But she couldn’t look away.

As if sensing her gaze, he glanced away from Boggs. His eyes met hers, and suddenly she had to look away, feeling guiltily embarrassed like she was a fourteen-year-old idiot again, holding her hands up towards the space heather and spreading her fingers as if warming them was the only thing on her mind. She missed him, even as he was only a few feet away from her. But she was in a tent with Katniss now and Haymitch shared one with Homes, the old man of Victory Squad. She hadn’t realized how much she’d gotten used to the warmth and surety of someone else there at night in just a few short weeks, until she no longer had it.

Maybe this was the end of it. He’d gotten her through the worst weeks in Thirteen, and it was in good part thanks to him that she stood here now, ready to go visit hell on Coriolanus Snow, rather than left behind. If Plutarch and Coin ever let them go actually fight, anyway. She was tired of taking potshots at windows for the cameras. But that between them, it had all been in Thirteen. She’d been weak then and they’d helped each other become strong again. The Capitol wouldn’t give up without a hard fight. There were dangerous days ahead and he was a vulnerability to her, a distraction. She didn’t need…she didn’t want…

Right now she couldn’t, because if he mattered as something more….bad enough to go into the fight surrounded by friends, unlike the Quell. She might have to watch any one of them die. At least she hadn’t had to watch her family die. _Maybe after it’s all over._ When they took Snow down. When she had no purpose to her life left—and that thought scared the hell out of her too. When she could be more than the bitch with the axe that Snow had made her, maybe then she could think about other things. 

(A/N: HID outtake, from the lead up to the Battle for the Capitol)


	33. Haymitch/Johanna: hands (for Anon)

She’d had to watch them holding hands every minute for weeks. For those who had someone of their own, maybe it had been sweetly romantic, the tenderness of love expressed at every turn. She’d seen some people smiling at it and making comments about young love. Although some people just looked annoyed by it the longer it went on.

But for her, seeing Finnick and Annie was acid on the wound. It only pointed out her own lack, her own failings and deficiencies, the things she’d never had and never would. _Nobody cares. Nobody will ever look at you like that. They only want to touch you to grab or grope. You’re not a person to them, you’re a bitch or a lay. They fear you or want to fuck you._

Being forced to constantly watch Finnick and Annie hold hands and gaze into each others’ eyes, selfishly oblivious of anyone and their feelings but their own, after being reduced to something barely human in that fucking Capitol cell made her feel so worthless she could hardly bear it.

But then she’d found out years ago that Finnick’s love was apparently meant to make her feel like shit and point out what she lacked. At least he’d had the courtesy to not flaunt it in front of her before…selfish fuck,why couldn’t he could keep it in their own room? And then she hated herself for hating Finnick but she couldn’t feel wrong for it. He was her friend, but looked like he didn’t have much time or thought for her hurts. 

She sat at their assigned table, ugly inside for years and now ugly outside with her scars and rough-cut stubbly hair and her too-big grey clothes, and she wanted to kill someone rather than look at those two another moment because she had to eat in this fucking cafeteria with them every meal and watch the public affection all over again. Because she wouldn’t cry. The Capitol didn’t get that pleasure, District Thirteen certainly wouldn’t either.

She understood more of how Finnick had felt, though that came months and months later, long after Finnick was dead. She’d look at Haymitch and she’d want to reach out and touch him again, to feel that sense of wonder and victory that he was entirely hers, to cling to him and this love they’d fashioned together despite all the pain. She’d think of the nights they’d spent together, his body against hers, his fingers laced with hers, his eyes watching hers. The loneliness of separation bit sharply, and alongside the urge to drag him back to their bedroom was the urge to capture even the slightest bit of that intimacy by taking his hand in hers, or press back against him and hope he’d wrap his arms around her waist as they watched the sunrise.

Then she’d remember Annie, whether walking beside them or standing there on her porch, and remember how she’d felt to be the one shut out of that joy and having its lack so openly rubbed in her face. Every kiss, every loving look, had been another dagger in the heart. No, she’d decide, we can wait. She might be a temperamental bitch sometimes still, but she couldn’t capture a moment of renewed happiness by knowingly causing someone else’s misery. 

Besides, she’d gotten so used to living her life in public that a right for her and Haymitch to have things be utterly private was a pleasure in and of itself anyway. 

(A/N: After Neil Diamond’s “Sweet Carolina”—sorry but not sorry—“he never lets go of her hand” was the first thing that came to mind with this prompt. But with a Haymitch/Johanna focus, that meant I thought I’d take a crack at writing Johanna’s likely perspective and the negative side of the constant Odesta public affection here. Sorry if I offended any Odesta fans here, but always more than one correct way to see things.)


	34. Beetee+Wiress: after Wiress' victory (for Penfoldx)

The banners rippled in the breeze off the bay as District Three welcomed home the victor of the 46th Hunger Games. Wiress Parker was one-half of Beetee’s fifteenth try at mentoring. He’d felt bad for District Twelve—their girl made the top eight this year, quite unusual. Silk Lafitte from One, randomly from the surplus victors to handle Twelve’s mentoring duties for the third year in a row, had smacked down her headphones and vented some of her frustration—“These weak Twelve tributes are never going to get a victor except if they get damn lucky!”

That had earned her some dagger glares from every mentor console district except One, Two, and Four. When it came down to it, the poor and downtrodden of the dark horse districts banded together. Beetee personally thought at Career victor was so blind that they couldn’t ever see the worthy attributes of a likely tribute, because they didn’t fit their mold.

Take Wiress, for instance. Beetee knew she’d been described as “odd”, even “weird” by those being less tactful. Wiress was less than charming, perhaps, but the moment he’d met her on the train, she’d been asking him questions, and he’d quickly seen the organized and intuitive mind behind them. Better than he’d have expected from someone whose parents he found out later were both C-grades, deemed capable of doing only the labor of an endless cycle of day-to-day tasks around the lab. Still better than being a D-grade and working in security or janitorial or food service, at least it meant being honorably involved in the science. But C-grades didn’t analyze. They certainly didn’t make leaps of logic the way this girl had.

So like with every tribute he felt had a chance, he’d asked what he could send her that would be most helpful. “A coil of strong wire,” she’d said softly. “It’ll be versatile.” He’d earned barely enough for “the odd girl” from most of the sponsors who wrote her off, but he’d done it, and he’d sent her the wire. He’d watched her through a night-vision camera lens, constructing a trap in a pitch-dark arena, counting under her breath as she measured precisely with handspans and steps to weave a deadly web in between the trees. Some of the other tributes bungled into it in the dark, tangled in it, cut themselves on it, and Wiress was always waiting for them with one last loop of wire. Their gurgling must have sounded all the louder in the darkness, and she must have felt their blood over her fingers as the garrote bit deeply into their throats.

They compared Wiress to a spider now. He’d heard the mentor aides say that the Gamemakers were already talking about the “genius” idea of unleashing giant spider mutts in the dark for the upcoming Second Quarter Quell. Give it a few years for people to forget Wiress, Beetee supposed, and the surprise and novelty of it would be much fresher.

After the cameras shut off, he went over to lead her to Victors’ Vista, to the view overlooking the bay and the ruins of the massive old bridge. Her parents would follow in a few hours, but he’d asked the Parkers for some time with Wiress first. Some things should be discussed, things that couldn’t be understood by others. “What do you want to do now?” he asked her. 

He knew an active mind like hers wouldn’t want idleness. He couldn’t stand it either and perhaps that was what saved him from the typical fate of a victor—that, and intellect wasn’t considered as sexually attractive as height and tight abdominal muscles. They’d wanted Beetee’s mind, not his body. Things had changed even since then with President Snow, or at least, the label put on them had. Victors were sold quietly now, in the name of possession rather than vengeance. Chances were Wiress would avoid that as well, with how they considered her odd.

“Lights,” Wiress said, nodding decisively. Her dark eyes met his. “I’d like to work on a more efficient system of lighting.” After four days immersed in total darkness, he could imagine she’d probably like to have every light in her house blazing brightly, but if she could make it a more efficient use of the electrical supply from Five, so much the better. His gaze dropped to her hands. If Remake hadn’t taken her in hand to fix it, her fingers would have borne the deep scars from the wire for life and he judged she’d have lost the use of at least three fingers from nerve damage.

“You’ll need better wire for that than what you used.” What she had used was coarse, ugly stuff. It was the best he could buy her with the money he’d cajoled from the sponsors. But it had fulfilled the simple needs of a weapon. 

“A project is only as good as its tools,” she agreed. She cocked her head aside slightly, regarding him with interest. “Would you be able to make me a better wire?”

“It so happens researching better conductive materials is one of my special projects.” He felt himself smile, as he hadn’t with anyone else in years. Because who else could understand him? He wasn’t alone anymore now.


	35. Haymitch/Johanna: secretly a virgin trope (for Districtunrest)

The Seven girl—Johanna Mason—was prowling around Mentor Central with the look of an irascible wildcat Haymitch had seen once in the woods when he was a kid—the look of something wounded and confused and angry, but determined to claw whatever was standing in its path.

Trouble was that there was no way out of this, claws or axe or whatever weapon she chose. No easy way to live with having killed off your own family with stupidity and shortsightedness, but at least he understood that, if nobody else.

"Wouldn’t sniff after Finnick, if I were you," he said, seeing how she stared at Mags’ new golden boy. Aged by the arena as she was, she wasn’t so old yet that there wasn’t still a glimmer of a teenage girl about her.

She turned on him, seeing him slouching on the sofa with a glass of brandy in hand, and her eyes turned into narrow slits of rage. ”Didn’t ask you,” she spat. ”As if anyone’s wanted to touch your sorry carcass for years.” Her eyes raked him up and down, her expression full of dismissive loathing.

He shrugged, putting down the glass. ”Oh, it’s been a dry spell of about thirty-three years,” he told her with a deliberate, lazy indifference. No secrets among victors and it wasn’t like it bothered him. Or at least, he’d convinced himself of that long ago. She laughed loudly enough that Cecelia glanced over, startled. ”Sweetheart, try an actual insult. ’Virgin’ ain’t gonna cut it.” He patted the seat beside him. ”C’mere. Let’s tell you some important things.” Obviously Blight hadn’t told her with the hungry way she’d stared at Finnick.

She looked at him dubiously. ”I’m not into fucking girls half my age,” he told her with excessive patience. He’d leave that vice to the Capitolites.

"Apparently you’re not into fucking anyone," she said with a smirk, though she sat down, sprawling out over the couch like a lazy cat, close enough that he could feel the heat of her skin where her thigh almost touched him. Deliberate on her part, he was sure. Maybe even in a few years she’d be good at it, but right now, her trying to mindfuck people was laughable with how obvious and over-the-top it was, rather like Effie Trinket’s clownish idea of face paint. "So, old man, what’s today’s life lesson?"

"We don’t touch Snow’s whores," he informed her in a soft voice, nodding to Finnick. 

"Bullshit. Victors can screw each other. I know he fucked Cashmere just last night," she said with an irritated snort. 

He sighed, rubbing his brow tiredly. Fucking Blight, doing a shitty job at looking after his junior partner here. Even old Cedrus could have told her a few things. At least she had the sense to keep her voice down. They’d told her that much. ”The whores,” he told her, “turn to each other to deal with things because they understand each other. It’s…different for the likes of us. They’re used by enough people already. So no, you don’t use them to scratch your itch unless you want every victor pissed at you.” He’d had Chaff explain that to him one night back when he was seventeen, tipsy, lonely, maybe a bit horny, and staring wistfully at pretty Chantilly Forbes.

"One of the rules?" she asked sarcastically, but the flash of understanding was in her eyes, and he saw how she carefully turned away from Finnick.

"Got it in one. Bright girl," he congratulated her sardonically. "Not bright enough to know you couldn’t defy Coriolanus Snow and get away unscathed, mm?"

"Fuck y—" She sprang up from the seat, the darkness of rage gathering in her eyes.

"At least I’ll say it to your face, girl. Plenty will whisper behind your back. Believe me, I know.” They’d told her three days ago when she refused Snow’s offer. He could imagine her too easily from now on, in her lonely house, left with nothing but guilt and emptiness.

She looked at him again as if seeing him for the first time. There was a flicker of fear there too. Good. She ought to be afraid of turning out like him. She settled back down, but more warily now, as if he’d become something more than just a pathetic drunk to openly scorn. ”Unfortunately for you,” he told her calmly, again dropping his voice too low for the microphones, “while most of ‘em were two weeks wonders, Snow’s had a good run these last years of being able to sell every victor to at least one buyer. Not many of us here who haven’t been through it.” He shrugged again, looking at her. ”If you’re that desperate for a fuck, my advice? Go find a boy back home.” _Marry him if you can. He may not understand all of you, but it’s better than being alone so long you become the local pariah._

She was too smart by half, though, because she said, “They don’t get me.” She sighed, a weary sound belonging more to a woman of fifty than a girl of seventeen. ”Not anymore. They’re all afraid of me,” she muttered.

Not to mention how one of her fellow tributes had tried to attack her in the arena, he was fairly sure she was in no rush for a casual fuck. ”I can imagine.”

"That why you never got married?" she questioned him sharply. "Or are you still pining for your little girlfriend Snow killed?" He tried to not show how that scored a hit.

"Fortunately for you, kid, I happen to think your smartmouthing is amusing. But that’s because I can keep up with you. Most of them won’t. And when you flaunt to a Capitol person that you’re better, they don’t take it well. So I’d advise you to learn to shut up occasionally and pick your battles before you get someone else killed. Because they can’t take it out on you." She inhaled sharply, obviously reminded of fresh graves ready to greet her when she went home, and finally nodded.

When he was young, it had been knowledge that if he was going to betray Briar’s memory, it damn well better be for something more than a meaningless fuck that kept his trousers buttoned, even though he was young and hormonal and lonely. Nothing less than love would have been acceptable, but he couldn’t have love because it meant putting that girl right in Snow’s crosshairs. Not to mention that after what he’d become in the arena, after getting innocent people killed, he didn’t deserve to live, let alone deserve a second chance at love. 

Eventually, self-denial became habit. And eventually, nobody would have looked twice at him anyway, so that made it even easier. It made it easy to tell himself he didn’t even want sex anyway. He’d done just fine without it all his life. It made it easier to forget those short months with Briar, laughing and kissing her, wanting so much more. But sometimes…he thought he’d sell what bloodstained shreds remained of his soul. Not even for sex, just for a friendly touch.

Didn’t matter. Although he admitted felt a pull towards this girl. Not sexual—he was no dirty old man, and there was obviously still enough of the child about her that he couldn’t even imagine it. It was more an emotional tug. But for the first time, maybe there was someone who understood what particular hell he’d been through and the guilt of having gotten everyone he’d loved killed off for his stupidity. And maybe he could help her avoid some of his mistakes.

He couldn’t bare all of it about Briar and that old pain, so he gave her the only answer he thought she might understand right now. ”Because sometimes it’s better to not have a thing at all than to accept it on the bad terms the Capitol leaves you with.” He gave her a steady smile that he knew didn’t reach his eyes. ”We both said ‘no’ to the Capitol’s terms before and it’s a right we bought in blood. So high as that price was, we ought to respect that and keep doing it.”

She understood, he saw that in a flash—the self-denial carried out as penance to the dead. _Clever girl._

(A/N: Not my headcanon! Definitely a challenge, but a fun one.)


	36. Haymitch/Johanna: Johanna cuts herself during wood chopping, Haymitch helps with fluff and snark (for Anon)

As usual, the never-ending weekly task of chopping firewood consumed much of the day. Peeta and Katniss had gone to run the trapline again and see to dinner. Already Haymitch thought about how much more they would need. Peeta’s weekly baking day was on Tuesday. They had to do a big load of laundry this Sunday, all the sheets and the like, and without electricity, that meant no washer and dryer—wryly he admitted he’d gotten spoiled in his years in the Village. So more water to heat to wash and then rinse, more wood needed to stoke the fire to do it, and more to keep the house warm enough to hang the stuff up to dry. Glancing at the woodpile, he sighed. No, they probably still needed more.

They’d swapped off between chopping and stacking duties through the day, and he could see Johanna’s arms moving a bit more slowly, and she paused now and again to shake them out. “Switch again?” he suggested, dusting the snow and bits of bark off his gloves.

Taking a moment, she looked up at him and nodded. “Yeah. Let me finish just a couple more.” With a resounding thwack she turned towards it, seeing the end in sight. He had an armload and was headed for the pile when the sound of the falling axe sounded odd, and he heard the grunt of suppressed pain. Turning his head over his shoulder, he dropped the wood and raced over, seeing the blood flowing through her fingers where she had them clamped on her knee, scarlet droplets falling steaming into the snow. Not the 51st Games, but he had to consciously shake it off, and the terror of seeing her injured was right there anyway.

She’d been a mentor herself, so she must have known. As he came over she told him, “It’s not that bad, I didn’t hit bone or anything, I just slipped.“ He let himself breathe again as he slipped an arm underneath hers. She grumbled—trying to hobble away one-legged like some demented stork. “Come on. You don’t need to carry me like a baby, dammit.”

“Then by all means, let’s just let you bleed out for another minute or two while you hobble in,” he said sarcastically, getting his other arm beneath her knees. “It’s not like I’m hurrying you off to ravish you.”

“Seems to me that I’m usually the one hurrying you off.” She made a face, and he saw the lines of her face drawn tight with pain, casual as she was trying to be about things.

He laughed at that, shoving the door open awkwardly with his shoulder, trying to let her have a little dignity still. Besides if they could joke, that would keep both their minds off it. “No objections.”

“Don’t know that I’ll be in shape for a good ravishing right now.”

“Ah well. Blood’s hell on laundry day anyway.” Maybe only those who’d endured what they had could joke about it so nonchalantly—maybe it was the only way to deal with it. “And you chirp at me about my handling an axe?”

“If I had a free hand right now, trust me, I’d be throwing something at you.”

“Then I’ll just make sure to hide all the sharp objects while you’re laid up.”

Putting her down on the old green couch in the parlor, he figured if it ended up with a couple of bloodstains, that wouldn’t put it in much worse shape. She was right. It was just a cut, if a gruesome one. So she’d have one more scar for the collection. He quickly managed to stitch the wound up, and while he had morphling to give her after, there was nothing to numb the area while he sutured. She took it well. Though given he’d had weeks of listening to her screaming while they tortured her in the cell next door, he knew this was nothing. 

Given the need to heat water for her to wash up and for him to scrub his hands as well, it wasn’t the easiest task, but she gave him a look of gratitude. He knew full well that after the arena that being stuck with the coppery smell of blood was an issue for both of them, and replacing it with the sharp-sweet whiff of lemon soap put him better at ease at well. He’d burned the bloody rags used in treating the wound. Probably a waste, the Seam part of him acknowledged with a wince, but honestly, he just couldn’t stand them sitting around until Sunday giving off the reek of old blood. Seeing her look pale and tired from the pain and blood loss, “I’ll wake you up for dinner,” he promised, draping a blanket over her and throwing another log on the fire. Now with the adrenaline wearing off, he started to feel the aches of a day of wood chopping out in the bitter cold, and the moment he left the warm parlor, he’d feel it in the chill of the house. 

“Don’t go chopping wood alone, you’ll probably cut your foot off,” she told him, nestling down deeper into the blanket. “We’ll make do this week with what we have.” Then she cocked an eyebrow and flipped the corner of the blanket back, beckoning him over with one hand. “So c’mere and keep me warm. Spare some wood for the fire.” 

“Yeah, fine, I’m aware that’s not an invitation for me to offer to keep you warm with another kind of wood, thanks very much,” he said dryly, but he was smiling as he said it. They carefully maneuvered together, ending up with her lying half on top of him and both of them careful to not jostle her injured knee. Flipping the blanket back over both of them, he held on to her, relieved that the morphling helped knock her out quickly.

(A/N: early in AFAF)


	37. Haymitch+Peeta: Offer Me (for Worldwithinworld)

Peeta rang the doorbell, the basket with a crock of soup and a loaf of bread tucked hastily over his arm. He tucked the cheery blue-checked napkin back over the food against the raw autumn breeze. Stupid, really, it was only a thirty second walk from his house in the Victors’ Village to Haymitch’s, it wasn’t like the food would have gotten cold already.

Seeing his ma was in a mood, sensing with that odd sixth sense that just the wrong thing would put her in an ugly mood again, he’d hastily finished his own meal and blurted that he’d take some of the leftovers over to Haymitch.

Jinny Mellark had looked over at him and nodded. Farl and Bannick didn’t say anything either, though Nick risked a sympathetic glance at him before turning back to his soup with undue interest. Peeta breathed out a slow sigh of relief. That meant that she was on one of her days where she could handle it enough to just get him out of the way before something triggered her temper. She wasn’t going to make a cruel remark like One useless waste going to visit another, hmm? or What do you owe him for? We all know he wanted the girl to live.

He’d been horrified the first time he was in Haymitch’s house and saw the neglect and the clutter and the broken liquor bottles. But then, in the neat, tidy Mellark house in the Village, there were ugly things too that had followed them up from the house in town. Wealth didn’t solve everything. Nobody could claim Haymitch was happy, for all he was the richest man in the district. Wealth couldn’t make his ma happy either. Whatever it was that had twisted her life so badly, it wasn’t poverty.

She hadn’t said it, but he knew she’d thought it, and she’d said it before, so the dismissive words of One useless waste going to visit another stuck in his mind. He thought about Katniss, lying to him in the arena and in Caesar’s studio. He thought about Haymitch, lying to everyone and helping convince the Gamemakers to keep him alive. There were two people in the world that had hurt him, but they cared enough to do what it had taken to ensure his survival. 

He sometimes wondered if it was always like that, if love couldn’t exist without some kind of pain.

Haymitch answered the door finally, shirt buttoned crooked and dark hair looking like he’d just rolled out of bed at Peeta’s ringing the bell. Considering it was lunchtime, chances were that he had. He kicked a liquor bottle behind him, out of the door’s path. His bloodshot silver-grey eyes studied Peeta. Not too drunk to focus—not yet. Whatever he saw, there was a flicker of something in his expression that might have been concern, or sympathy. It was gone before Peeta could read it. “Food’ll keep,” he nodded to the basket as Peeta held it out, taking it and setting it behind him. “Was on my way out for a walk,” he said abruptly, reaching for his jacket and combing hasty fingers through his shaggy, too-long hair. “You coming or are you just gonna hold the door up, boy?” 

“Coming,” Peeta said, relieved. He knew it was a lie, and whatever Haymitch read in him, he was keeping Peeta from home, or from looking over towards Katniss’ house, for an hour or so. Haymitch never said much. He never asked questions. But Peeta had the odd sense that without a word really spoken, the older man somehow understood far too much.


	38. Haymitch+Johanna: Pacific Rim crossover (for bigbigbigday006)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Previously posted as a prospective multi-chapter story, but I think this'll work better as the occasional drabble in "Panem Rim"verse. But here's the setup...

_February 12, 2019_  
The many grizzly bears prowling Chichagof Island suddenly weren’t the most fearsome predators in the area anymore. Off the shore of the western side of the island, facing the cold ice-choked waters of the Gulf of Alaska, _Goldstrike Twelve_ loomed like a steel mountain, a black and grey sentinel standing there, after trudging into position from where the Jayhawk helicopters had dropped the gigantic 260 foot tall jaeger. The kaiju was sounding early, heading into the shallows. Marshal Pentecost had calculated the intercept and ordered them to make their stand here near Juneau, trying to protect Anchorage and the Shatterdome.

In the conn-pod, Haymitch and Maysilee were doing their usual thing, connected to each other through the Drift. That mainly meant waiting and getting occasional updates from the staff at the Shatterdome over the comm. In the meantime, the two of them kept up the constant, immediate thought-sent chatter of their linked minds.

_Heard someone nicknamed this one “Pinky” when they got a visual on it. It’s actually pink._

_Jesus, Stack must have blown his stack at that, man loves his protocols. Bright pink? Seriously?_

_Seriously. Kaiju are apparently trying new fun and perky styles? We’ll have it recorded on our kills as “Razorbeak” though. Sounds more impressive._

_I wish it wasn’t Juneau, May._ Haymitch knew Maysilee immediately sensed every bit of his anxieties through the drift. Briar was there. They’d thought it was far enough away from the Shatterdome to be safe, but close enough that he could spend what time he did have away from duty with his wife. Juneau was so small, only thirty thousand, a kaiju wouldn’t bother with that compared to the glorious carnage-buffet they could make of Anchorage, ten times larger. But instead here they were in a gigantic Goddamn robot defending the coastal barrier that was Chichagof Island, and thus defending Juneau, and he couldn’t help but be afraid. Stacker Pentecost had put the Beckets in _Gipsy Danger_ and the Odairs in _Omega Hurricane_ ready as backup, coming back from an engagement in Seattle against whatever the hell they’d codenamed the kaiju known as SE-19. _Goldstrike_ would have deployed down south with them, but the Shatterdone was still finishing up the last upgrades to the old Mark I, and so he and Maysilee had to sit that one out. Lucky thing—meant they were here to catch Razorbeak.

Stack had called for an evacuation when he’d deployed _Goldstrike_ , but Haymitch knew how slowly it would go. Juneau had no roads out, the only American capitol a person couldn’t reach by driving. It would be air evac—escape by boats on the water wouldn’t be safe with a kaiju there. He about drove himself crazy in trying to do the math of the evacuation and all he could conclude was that it was impossible. There just wasn’t enough _time_.

Sensing his fears, Maysilee reached out to him through the Drift, trying to calm him down. Though his fears tugged on hers, and the bleed of shared emotion ended up unwinding her anxieties as well like a dropped spool of ribbon given a tug. Quick as thought, he knew them. Hers weren’t about Juneau, her husband Darnell lived inland in Fairbanks. But she’d been there last week and the doctor said the radiation from the early days of riding a Mark I jaeger, before they figured out the need for radiation shielding, might be playing havoc with Maisie Lee Donner-Mellark’s ability to have kids. He felt all of it—her fear, her doubt, her longing for that kid. He reached out to her as well, letting her know that she wasn’t alone. He saw it and he understood. He and Briar had thought about it, once or twice. Not as seriously as Maysilee and Darnell, clearly, but enough that he understood her emotions.

Being a ranger and a jaeger pilot meant never being alone. Having someone sharing his entire mind at first had been weird, but they’d soon gotten used to having no secrets. Every time they suited up and melded to pilot _Goldstrike_ , they grew closer. Not in an awkward way. He had Briar and she had Donnel, and in the shared space of the neural handshake, they both knew with bone-deep instinct that neither of them would ever cheat on the ones that they loved. Marriage wasn’t like the bond with a co-pilot. It was a different intimacy. But having Maysilee was like having a sister, one with whom he could share everything. Given that he had his little brother Ash and Briar already, adding a sister to that felt like a blessing.

 _Let’s put it away,_ he advised her. They always did that together if it wasn’t a hurried intercept and they had the time. Ran through the stresses and anxieties, from the mundane stuff all the way to the coming fight, and this time, as ever, they worked together to clean it from their Drift and let it flow away. They would go into their fight calm and ready to kick some Category 3 kaiju ass.

But when the fight came, it came in a hurry. One minute there was nothing but the calm of the ocean, and then suddenly there was a boiling fury in the water and a flash of bright pink as Pinky-slash-Razorbeak surfaced, suddenly standing as tall as _Goldstrike_. Immediately the two of them were on it, working in instinctive concert to pilot the movements of _Goldstrike_ to engage and gain the upper hand in the fight.

It all went well for a while. But then the alarms came on and with dawning horror, he saw that the upgraded neural networking system had failed. _Goldstrike_ was acting like a punch-drunk boxer, always sluggishly a few seconds behind Razorbeak’s rapid movements. After that, it was just waiting for the end. The really shitty thing was that the pain receptors were working just fine, and he felt every injury to the jaeger like it was on his own body. It was meant to get a ranger’s ass moving faster, responding instinctively rather than visually, but when he was willing the jaeger to move with all of his might and got just a sluggish drunken wobble of the limbs, that wasn’t really helping.

Then the claws started scratching on the conn-pod itself. Haymitch saw the kaiju’s beady eye and sharp beak eyeing the obstacle intently. “Anchorage, this is Donner-Mellark. _Goldstrike Twelve_ hull integrity is going to be pretty quickly compromised,” Maysilee said hurriedly, while they still had the comm-link to report it.

“Can you hold on at all?” Stacker’s crisp British tones came over the comm. “ _Gipsy_ and _Omega_ will be there in fifteen minutes.” Every minute they could hold out bought precious time for the reinforcements to arrive, time for civilians to evacuate. Every second they hung on might mean more lives saved. The moment they abandoned their jaeger, they left Juneau completely undefended.

“We’re being opened like a can of soup, sir,” he said as a bright pink claw pierced in only a few feet from his face, even as he tried to raise the jaeger’s arm to swat the damn thing away. He felt the cold February air coming in through the gash on the conn-pod. Focusing through the pain, a feeble flick of the jaeger’s fingers was all he could manage. “But you know we’ll stay with her.”

“Maintain as long as possible and then ev—“ With that, the comm-link died with a squelch as Razorbeak’s claw raked through some vital connection.

 _We wait too long, Jamie, we go down with her because the electronics are all jacked up and nonresponsive,_ Maysilee pointed out.

 _Or this asshole crushes the conn-pod like a grape and we get pulped, yeah. But that’s how it is._ That was being a Pan Pacific Defense Corps ranger. He’d sooner die than punch out too soon when willingness to hold on and sacrifice his life might make a difference. Nobody rode a jaeger without embracing the very real possibility of their own death. Too many of the jaeger-jocks that had started four years ago in the Mark Is went down with their machines—death was a reality they all knew so intimately.

So they let Razorbeak keep toying with them. They only hoped that the other two jaegers could intercept and hold the kaiju before it stomped ashore and did too much damage. But anyone in the Corps who ever saw the failure to hold the Miracle Mile knew it was just that—a total miracle if the monster didn’t make it ashore after that. Only when Razorbeak had dragged them underwater like a chew toy and the freezing cold Alaskan waters were trickling in through the gashes in the conn-pod, and the lights began flickering to warn them of imminent total system failure, did the two of them slip their harnesses and find the escape pods. At least they had these now with the upgrade. Before that, a jaeger pilot knew it was a case of win or die—either the kaiju died or the jaeger and both its pilots did. Made the stakes a bit higher, but it had meant too many good men and women died from an inability to escape a crushed or submerged jaeger.

But something went wrong with his evac and suddenly there was a bright, fiery pain in his guts that would have had him doubled over had he not been wedged into the escape pod so tightly. Once he popped the lid on the surface, and climbed out, with the raft inflated and floating in a sea of green marker dye for the helicopters, he looked down to see that part of the pod had shattered, piercing his drive suit around his stomach. He was pretty sure that grey matter bulging out was his intestines, and he felt his fingers trembling as he tried to stuff them back in. His ears were buzzing—helicopters? Maybe the Jayhawks that had dropped _Goldstrike_ , maybe the cavalry was arriving. He felt like he couldn’t lift his head enough to see. He was too tired for that. 

He was too busy scanning the ocean for either Razorbeak coming to kill him, or Maysilee’s pod. But Maysilee didn’t come up. He kept looking and looking, shuddering and panting and feeling unbearably cold in the February air as he watched, knowing she had to be there somewhere. Any moment now, she’d be there.

But she wasn’t there. Ripped out of the Drift as abruptly as they’d been rather than being able to gradually disconnect, he still felt her, more muted than when they had the direct neural handshake. So he didn’t get direct thoughts, but he could feel her emotions still there in his mind, clear and present. Their ghost-Drift was alive and well as he knew her fear, her panic, and then suddenly there was the wrenching absence of anything. She was gone, as if she’d been ripped right out, and it hurt like losing a piece of himself. The silence in his mind was terrible and absolute. Maysilee was dead and she’d died alone, died without him, trapped inside the sinking jaeger, drowning slowly. He should have died too, down there with her, rather than up here like this. He was alone now for the first time in years, a dying man with his soul severed in half, adrift in an endless sea. 

The roar in his ears might have been from the shock, but he thought it was Razorbeak’s sound of triumph at defeating its enemy and turning its wounded fury towards the nearest target—Juneau. _Briar, oh God Briar, be safe, tell me you got on the first plane,_ he thought, as he finally slumped over and blacked out.

~~~~~~~~~

“You’re such an idiot,” Johanna told Rhus, though she was grinning affectionately as she said it. “Rhus Amsell and his schmoopy Valentine’s Day plans strike again. Tell me you didn’t line up a string quartet or any crazy shit like that.”

Rhus grinned over at her and Johanna felt her heart skip a beat again at that crooked smile of his and the sheer boyish glee in his hazel eyes. “Sure I did, and they’re due to follow us around for the whole weekend, Hanna—serenading us at all times.”

“When I make coffee? When we take a crap?” she teased him gleefully. “What about while I’m busy fucking my hot fiancé senseless?” She reached down and squeezed one cheek playfully, thinking that room service and a bed sounded pretty damn good.

She would give him all due credit, though. They both needed a small break from school and the eternal hell of masters’ thesis writing, and he’d put this all together as a surprise for them, flying them down from Fairbanks and getting their nose out of both of their latest revisions. They’d defend in April, already had decent job prospects lined up with the state government after that. Not many people were hardcore enough to tackle the massive task of forestry on the colossal Alaskan scale, especially given the shitty winters. But she loved this place, and she loved Rhus fiercely, glad that he was enough in tune with her and her life that they wanted the same things, and so they’d come here together. 

She’d known almost since the first forestry class they sat in together back in Minnesota during undergrad that he was the one for her. Though that was probably after initially thinking he was an idiotic dipshit for bringing all his books and folders and forgetting something as essential as a pencil, but he’d grown on her since then. _Like fungus,_ they joked—forestry humor, but being able to share that with him, silly as it was, felt like a blessing. 

Rhus’ arm went around her shoulders and he said, “So maybe we should skip the st—“ But his words were drowned out by the sudden screeching wail of the kaiju alert sirens. Eyes wide, her gaze flew towards the west, towards the barrier islands and the ocean. No kaiju had ever attacked Juneau before. It wasn’t big enough for them to bother with, really, given meatier prizes like Anchorage and Seattle and San Francisco.

But the announcement that it was only a test of the warning system didn’t come. This was the real thing, and her heart started to beat faster as the voice instead directed them to the airport for evacuation. They’d just flown in two hours ago—how could the day have turned this quickly? “There’s no way to escape the Panhandle by road from here,” Rhus said, hollering to be heard over the alarms, his face twisted with a look of horror as even now the yelling and screaming of terrified people running through the streets began.

They got to the airport, which was already jam-packed. She could look through the windows out on the tarmac and see people brawling and shoving like it was some fisherman’s bar, trying to get a place on the few small planes available. She did the grim math. Maybe a couple hundred people could get on those planes. For them to fly to Fairbanks or somewhere safely inland, dump their passenger load, and come back—it was impossible. Whoever was getting out safely before the kaiju arrived would be the people seated on in this first and only round of flights, and she knew that these people knew it. 

A young woman standing near her by the ticket counter shook her head, sending her long black braid flying. She was at least part Alaskan Native, Johanna was fairly sure, from her short build, the coppery tint to her skin, her wide cheekbones and her luminous dark eyes. “No more flights after this,” she said, half to herself, but half to anyone nearby who might listen. “And I wouldn’t be sitting here in a crowd with everyone else,” she said.

“Smart,” Johanna acknowledged. “My fiancé and I were just visiting for the weekend,” she griped, seeing Rhus shoving his way through the crowd back towards her. “Shit. Is Juneau always this exciting?”

“Poor luck,” her new friend acknowledged. She smiled more genuinely. “This is the biggest thing to hit town in years, trust me.” Getting the double meaning, Johanna managed to laugh, despite how her knees wanted to tremble, how she wanted to just start running and not stop. Terror threatened to override her mind and cloud it in darkness, but talking to this woman helped. Maybe seeing the look on Johanna’s face, the woman said, “But the jaegers will be here soon. They’ll take care of it.”

“And if they don’t?”

“They will,” and there was a hint of defiant pride in her voice as she said, “My husband is a ranger. He has been since the first jaegers rolled out.”

Well, probably not a good idea to question the ability of a jaeger pilot unless she wanted the ranger’s wife to possibly try to punch her lights out. “Which jaeger?” It had to be one assigned to the Anchorage Shatterdome, of course.

“ _Goldstrike Twelve_. Haymitch Abernathy and Maysilee Donner-Mellark.” The names didn’t ring a bell, to be honest. She was sure she’d likely seen this woman’s husband on TV after defeating a kaiju—rangers were treated like rock stars, and the news channels always wanted an interview. But she was no ranger groupie to follow them individually. They represented just a singular ideal to her, the men and women of the Pan Pacific Defense Corps that went out to fight the kaiju.

Rhus caught her arm and they started working their way through the tide of people in the airport, like salmon against the current. Once they were clear, she saw Mrs. Abernathy one more time. Raising her hand, she called, “Good luck!” 

She got a wave in return and then the other woman turned back to the west. Johanna looked towards the harbor and saw the figures there, wreathed in the winter mist. The lone jaeger stood tall, a blocky black and grey figure solid as the mountains of the Panhandle, and the kaiju…well, it had long legs and a wicked-looking beaky protrusion for a nose, and its hide was mottled with a bright, shocking pink.

Standing there watching the fight, she felt almost awestruck at the titanic clash. She’d seen YouTube videos and whatever, but there was something viscerally real about watching it for real, and knowing exactly what two people strapped into that hunk of steel had put their lives on the line to protect. _That’s what being a ranger means,_ she thought.

She only snapped out of it when Rhus grabbed her hand again, yanking her back, shouting at her that they needed to try to find a safe place away from the airport. He was right, and they hurried away, still having to fight some of the crowd pouring towards the airport as if there was actually something there that could save them. Where were the anti-kaiju bunkers in this city? Did they even have any, or had they depended on their city's small size to save them from the notice of a predatory kaiju?

The mighty roar came just as they hid in a solidly built warehouse. The earth shook like during an earthquake, but she knew this was no ordinary, natural shift of tectonic plates. This was from the otherworldly thing that the rift in the Marianas Trench had spawned. Closing her eyes, she burrowed closer to Rhus, feeling in her mind like the shadow of the approaching monster loomed over her, casting her ever deeper in darkness. It would devour her whole and she couldn’t escape, and she felt rational thought being blotted out, giving way to just the terrified instincts of a panicked animal. The fucking rangers had failed her and everyone else, and now she was going to die.

When she heard another roar that sounded like it came from right over them she instinctively screamed, even as Rhus muffled it with his hand, and fought her way free of him, kicking and shoving, needing to escape.

She only made it halfway to the door before the building crumbled inward like a tower of child’s blocks. For a moment there was nothing but red-hot searing pain as the weight of falling brick slammed her to the ground—she could hear the sharp snapping of her own bones like dry twigs, or like wood popping in a fire. She retched from the pain, feeling the hot slime of vomit rising in her throat. She must be face down, because she didn’t choke on it or have it flow back into nose and mouth once she threw up. 

She couldn’t move, feeling the pressure and weight of all that rubble on her. Quickly enough she found she could barely even wiggle anything, being too tightly pinned down. Her chest felt tight from both debris and dread, and she inhaled brick dust, choking and sputtering. Overwhelmed by the pain and by her growing terror for Rhus and realizing that she was trapped here, fighting the monster in her mind was just too much. She gave in and let it win, screaming and sobbing, cursing the kaiju, cursing the shitty jaeger that had failed and left her to this fate, cursing Rhus for bringing them on this stupid vacation.

She didn’t know exactly how long it was before her consciousness finally snuffed out like a candle flame and she gratefully gave way to the relief from pain and terror, even if it meant death. But she knew it wasn’t nearly soon enough.


	39. Haymitch/Johanna, on their wedding night (for Anon)

In the dim glow of lamplight, as he felt the pleasant drowsy fatigue pulling at him and driving him towards sleep in spite of himself, he saw his new wife currently drooled a little on his shoulder and he felt her elbow digging into his ribs with the occasion twitch in her sleep from how she’d burrowed against him and how closely he held her in turn.

Well, no matter on that—he didn’t want to let her go and his mind was filled instead with the afternoon and the evening, her grin as they danced, the confidence in her steps, her eyes dark with desire as they met his, the brush of her hands on his skin, and the strong grip of her fingers in his both as they said their vows and then later in this bed—and all the while, his brain tried to protest _You shouldn’t…failed too many people…don’t deserve this…it’ll go bad somehow_ …well, that was the definition of grace, he supposed—something wonderful and undeserved, but cherished all the more for it, and he knew he’d keep that thought to himself until he worked through it better because she’d just snort and tell him he was an idiot—which, by his reckoning, was yet another of her ways of saying I love you.

She let out a faint snore; he chuckled quietly, smoothing a hand over her tousled brown hair, closing his eyes and savoring the feel of holding a woman in his arms he drifted off to sleep—true, she might be sharp as a knife and even more dangerous, but there was so much more to her than that, and he looked forward to discovering it all.


	40. Johanna, Gloss, Finnick: drinking game (for Anon)

Victors of the 64th through 66th, and her a woman—of course they’d want pictures of them out at the bar, socializing, laughing, drinking, partying, maybe implying a potential rivalry between two bright Career boys for her attentions—she realized that most Capitol women would faint at the thought of being the lucky lucky girl who’d fucked both Gloss Donovan and Finnick Odair, and with Gloss there was even the oh-so-hot pay-to-view tape to prove it.

Her lips curved into a slight smirk—they didn’t know about Haymitch before either of these two, and they never would; that little secret, her choice, was theirs alone rather than Snow’s demands foisted upon them, and that thought would always please her because it meant even in one tiny thing, she’d won. 

"So, pretty boys, should we find out which of you two can’t hold your liquor?" she said, eyeing them and leaning in on one elbow. 

"How about we do a bit of ‘Never Have I Ever’?" Finnick suggested, sitting back in his chair, that fake air of brainless hedonism well in place.

Gloss said, smiling that lazy, leonine smile of his, “Winner takes all?”

"Oh, after the arena, is there any other way for victors to play?” she said, trying to keep the edge of angry sarcasm out of her voice and make the remark safely flippant.


	41. Haymitch: dream (for Anon)

Aurelius sat there looking at him patiently, not a single tap of the pencil or twitch of the foot as he waited. It unnerved Haymitch. That kind of stillness readily put him in mind of either a reptile or a corpse.

"Who said I have nightmares?" Haymitch demanded irritably.

"You were under observation during your detox period, Abernathy. It was clear you experience night terrors." Yeah, he’d spent his entire adult life being watched.

Two could play at this shit. Haymitch just stared at him in turn, willing Aurelius to get the message: no, we are not talking about this. Fuck Coin’s mandate about counseling. This was his life and his mind was the only privacy he’d ever had. They’d killed his family, forced him to beg for help for doomed kids every year and watch them die, sold his body, broken his pride, taken everything that mattered. They weren’t getting this from him.

"So what do you dream, when it’s not nightmares?” Aurelius questioned, eyes mild behind his glasses.

"Oh, the usual stuff a single man thinks about. Threesomes, women that want to be seduced or call me ‘Daddy’, you know," he said, shrugging and putting his hands behind his head, trying for the very picture of nonchalance. "The best fucks I’ve had in the last ten years have all been in my head, unfortunately."

Truth be told, that featured in his nightmares too. Threesomes, grown women and men who wanted to play school-age virgins, the smell of sex and greedy eyes and grasping hands, the nauseating sound of his name in a Capitol accent. Those dreams came out to play right along with candy-pink birds, the slippery feel of his own entrails, and the smell of rotting blood ingrained into his very skin; or the seemingly endless parade of the deaths of all those tributes he could never have saved.

"Really?" Aurelius asked, voice carefully neutral.

No, not really. He couldn’t even remember the last time he’d dreamed about sex. It was one more thing the Capitol had taken from him and ruined. And then with the alcohol numbing everything comfortably and how nothing really mattered at all, mustering the effort to even care about sex he wasn’t having just didn’t seem worth it.

The two of them resumed their staring contest.

Now and again, when he wasn’t dreaming about mutts or dead kids or the smell of burning flesh in that old Seam house or being fucked, Haymitch dreamed about breakfast, of all things. 

He’d been a fair cook once, since he’d had to learn to do for himself. Back then, food was one of the few comforts he had, a small pleasure when everything else was gone. He’d learned only later that alcohol took the hurt away much more decisively, but he was young then, and cooking became a challenge as well as a comfort, something to occupy his mind. Young enough that when he was twenty, he got friendly notification from Snow two months prior to the Games that he had best lose some weight before Reaping Day “for his health”. The implied or else was there. Had to keep the patrons happy, they didn’t want their whore to be chubby, and if Snow couldn’t sell him, someone would pay. It told him plenty fifteen years later when he didn’t get cracked down on again once the weight piled on thanks to the booze. He was used up by that point, all the supposedly shining promise tarnished up, and nobody cared about an ageing, fat drunk embarrassment.

So he dreamed about breakfast. Windows open in the kitchen to let in the morning sunlight, and the slight breeze in a sticky midsummer morning—July or early August, when he ought to be in the Capitol, but there he was instead, cooking breakfast in his kitchen. The walls weren’t faded and peeling, the curtains weren’t sad and limp and yellowed. Eggs and bacon sizzled merrily in the old cast-iron pan—he could hear it, smell it, his mouth watering a little as he anticipated tasting it, watching the bacon crisp up and the eggs cook. Toast, golden brown and spread with just a little butter, and a crock of blueberry jam sitting beside it, coffee brewing in the pot too.

A woman’s voice mumbled “Morning” behind him, still so thick with sleep he couldn’t tell the accent aside from it not being Capitol and making his skin crawl. Arms wrapped around him from behind, squeezing him in a greeting hug as he worked the eggs in the pan.

He was in a kitchen that wasn’t a faded mess, because he wasn’t a faded mess. In his dream, he was thinner, younger, sober, and he didn’t automatically turn in terror on anyone who grabbed him from behind with a knife in hand. He was a man a woman actually might want to touch, a man who might have a woman who shared his bed every night and came downstairs for breakfast, touching him with that kind of casually intimate affection.

He didn’t know if that dream-wife was short or tall, thin or plump, fair or dark, pretty or plain, merchie or Seam or even from another district. He never turned around to look at her. If he did she’d disappear, because she wasn’t there. Even his delusional dreaming brain knew it couldn’t be real.

So he never turned. He just kept cooking their meal, letting her hold him like that and savoring the feel of it, sometimes even long past the point the food should have burned. But it was his dream, so it never did. Inevitably he finally woke up, a shitty wreck of a man alone in his bed, curling in on himself against the sudden feeling of hollowness. He’d rather have dreamed of fucking and woken up with a raging erection. A couple minutes in the bathroom would cure that ache. Only the alcohol drowned this one, and Thirteen made sure that wasn’t an option now.

No, they weren’t getting that from him. He looked at Aurelius and said, matter-of-factly and entirely honestly, ”You know, I like it best when I don’t dream at all.”


	42. Haymitch/Johanna: Johanna is from Twelve and Haymitch is her mentor (for Anon)

It took fifteen years. It took fifteen years, and the fortitude of a girl who somehow managed to scrape herself together in the middle of hell, overcome her terror, and start playing to survive. It took fifteen years, and the Capitol spinning it all as a clever act all along, playing possum to trick everyone into thinking she was weak and useless. It took fifteen years, and the sponsors finally taking notice and deciding Johanna Mason was worth throwing money at.

Such an unusual, striking girl from Twelve, they said, noticing her brown eyes and brown hair and golden skin. They saw Petra Mason on TV, her brown eyes and brown hair and golden skin. Petra was Seam-born and Seam-raised, but she’d passed that difference to her daughter. He didn’t doubt they’d called Petra Peacekeeper brat as a kid, just as they had his little brother Ash.

He brought home from the 66th Games a girl that the Capitol loved and feared and the Seam had never quite seen as fully one of their own. He could sympathize with that. They didn’t see him as theirs any longer either.

He told her how it would go, starting that next summer. Twelve’s first female victor. They’d want her. ”Please”, was all she said as she asked him for his help. ”Maybe I can’t stop it, but I can make sure they don’t have this.” He knew as well as she did that all the local boys were terrified of her now. He hated himself for doing it, even as he couldn’t deny her, remembering how awful it was that first time. Small victories were all they could have now. He thought they’d been discreet enough, knowing his house or hers were off-limits because of the surveillance. Two weeks later her family were all dead. Not discreet enough.

"No", he said when she came back to him. ”Once was enough. Dammit, you’re too young, and this is a bad idea.” 

She laughed bitterly, seventeen with a seventy-year-old’s weary, jaded eyes. ”Nobody comes out of that arena young, do they?” But she settled for a drink instead.

Didn’t matter that he wasn’t fucking her then. They all assumed he was, and the Capitol press speculating on whether he’d give up his bachelorhood for his lovely mentoring partner didn’t help. 

The rumors swirled—that he’d let Gerry die that year for her sake, that he’d finally gotten off his ass and saved a tribute only because he wanted her for himself. Some days he wondered if they might even be right. Fifteen years with nobody in Twelve who gave a damn or understood.

Six years made a difference. He finally got too old for Snow to sell. Her “vicious bitch” act wore out its welcome and they stopped selling her—well, it had always been more of a niche market. She went from a child-woman to a woman, and maybe he’d been her mentor once, but that line seemed to have blurred and finally erased as she no longer took her cues from him on everything. She challenged him, defied him, made it clear she wasn’t his tribute anymore. 

Six years of her right next door, of leaning on each other, needing the support for lack of anyone else, and because every year the tributes were still doomed, two mentors be damned. Still, he drank a lot less now. A living woman, even if they stood alone against the world, was a much better companion than the moonshine. Their own little private island, right in the middle of Twelve. Every year he endured the Capitol with someone who knew what it was like. 

She kissed him again that New Year’s, when they both knew that like every year, they’d have no neighbors coming to carol. ”Doesn’t matter,” he told her. ”Doesn’t matter. I’ve got you.” 

It was nothing like the last time, the only time. They were in his bed rather than hiding out in the woods. If Snow heard them, Haymitch didn’t give a shit—the old pervert. She wasn’t seventeen and ignorant and desperate; she kissed him with that ferocity she brought to everything, kissed him with equal passion and affection. Most of all, this time nobody would die for it. 

Too many questions now: would they marry knowing the Capitol would probably want them to have kids, would they even dare to have kids knowing they’d be doomed to the arena. Right now, he just wanted to shut it all out and marvel in the feeling that one person out there understood him, knew him all too well, could match him in all ways, and loved him anyway.


	43. Haymitch/Johanna, more EMT/derby fic (for Anon)

After that first little speech at the diner, Haymitch gave personal details seldom enough, so now that they’d worked together four months and he’d brought up the Snow arson case as an important one, she couldn’t just let that go. At her laptop the next night, trying to get some sleep despite her fucked-up system thanks to the shifts she worked now, she pulled up Google.

Searching “Coriolanus Snow” told her that Snow was still safe and sound in his cell upstate at federal prison, serving hundreds of sentences of life without parole for all those kids killed in twelve different states. He was apparently also suffering from lung cancer and there was a petition out for his release on humanitarian grounds. She gave a derisive snort at that. She might be working the ambulance, might be saving lives every night, but she wasn’t to the point where she didn’t think the world wasn’t better off without some people.

But one picture caught her eye. Snow had set fire to a school twelve years back. Old school, underfunded, inner city, ill-maintained, overcrowded. A firetrap, in other words. She had been in Minnesota still then, and she tended to avoid most fires in the news. That was before she’d gotten the nerve to face the fire. Even in the normal run of things, to be honest, the death of eighteen kids in a fire was horrible news, but it was dwelled upon for a week and quickly forgotten.

A firefighter carried a little girl down the steps of the school in his arms, her eyes closed and her body limp, unburned. Twelve-year-old Rue Kitteredge could have been simply peacefully asleep, but she wasn’t. 

Even before she saw the firefighter identified, she knew him. She recognized the face even as his eyes were cast down to the dead girl he carried out. His features were less distinct as he wore a mask of soot broken with tracks of sweat, but she knew those eyes were grey, and the hair beneath his helmet would be dark and curly. 

Twelve years ago. He’d been twenty-eight then, her age now, and seeing the look of anguish on his face, she knew instinctively that was when he’d started seriously drinking to cope. He wasn’t alone in that, though. He’d told her that they might have been sober as anything while on duty, but when they were off, quite a few firefighters had breath that shouldn’t be around an open flame, and even if he laughed wryly as he said it, it was obviously no joke. She’d seen the Fifth Precinct’s lieutenant out at the bar last Saturday, pounding back the tequila.

She clicked out of the picture and went to bed. The image stayed with her, though. The next night it was practice again, and the team members did scrimmage. Little Mermayhem put the fresh meat through their paces working on plows and the like. As she waited her turn, she watched Haymitch—Gin—once again arguing with Pearl Jammer, the Head NSO, with her pink-dyed hair. His face had determination and irritation rather than grief. Pearl threw her hands in the air and headed back to the bench. The joke around the team was that it was a wonder the Sirens officials ran as smoothly as they did, given their head ref and head NSO butted heads so damn often.

“Eyes on the drill, Jo,” Mayhem chided her gently, as she realized they’d been waiting on her.

“Got it, sorry, work stuff,” she muttered, although she wanted to snap that it wasn’t like that with her and Gin, and she’d seen Mayhem getting flirty with the bronze-haired refcruit out in the parking lot.

That was the good thing about derby. It had become a way to quit drinking for him. It was easy to lose herself in it, and forget that tomorrow night someone might die in her ambulance again, and she and Haymitch would go eat at the diner and keep each other company until they could move past it and go home. She could forget the dead little girl and Haymitch’s face. She could forget the cold fear at wondering whether her anger was really enough, whether she really could face the fire now and the human cost of it. 

It wasn’t about the fire for me, he’d said. Maybe it wasn’t for her either. She didn’t know by this point. 

But for now, she just skated, and between the bruises and aching thigh muscles and sweat, and the compliments from her fellow fresh meat, she managed to what it was like being Johanna Mason for a few hours. He’d been right about that. It was a good kind of forgetting in becoming someone else for a little while and getting her frustrations out, rather than just drowning it with booze or sex or anything else. She hadn’t thought of her derby name yet. She’d get there as she got closer to passing, as she figured out who this person was that she became out on the rink.

Some days now she wondered if she was more determined to pass her assessments here to make the Sirens than to make it into the firefighting academy, and she wasn’t sure she cared.

(A/N: The pic of Rue and Haymitch is based on the famous picture of Firefighter Richard Scheidt carrying John Michael Jajkowski Jr. after the 1958 Our Lady of the Angels school fire in Chicago. )


	44. Haymitch/Johanna, trust me (for Anon)

It was the longest time she’d ever taken getting someone shirtless—a matter of weeks, or alternately, she could say it took her close to a decade. Getting him totally naked? Long time in the future, that was certain. 

Then again, with most of those hurried club encounters, she tried to keep the clothes on as much as possible. It was one thing to flaunt her body as a weapon, but that was another thing entirely. She’d been stripped naked often enough by Capitolites in her few years as their whore and she could be honest enough now to admit that she’d enjoyed hearing those stupid club-dwellers ask her for more, asking her to do this to them, let them do that to her, take some piece of clothing off, and denying them what they wanted, insisting, No, my way. And seeing them acquiesce, the sorry bastards, because they were so desperate to fuck a victor they’d pay the price in pride—they were just like the ones that bought her, but at least she controlled the terms this time.

She’d put up her walls. Letting them down was taking time, and sometimes she still had the urge to just hurry up and fuck him and get it over with. Prove to herself that they could do it and it wouldn’t be a disaster—because the longer they waited, the bigger the disappointment might be if it didn’t work.

Boundaries, the shrink insisted. You should establish a series of progressively liberal boundaries, and both of you need to respect them until you’ve taken proper time to test them and you both agree you’re good to move to the next stage. Seemed like it worked as well in this as it had with learning to live in the same quarters as each other without turning everything into picking a fight out of awkwardness at having someone so near, so intimate.

Maybe that was working. She had a feeling of wanting to push on at other times, and it wasn’t born from panic. Impatience, wondering what it would be like with him, and sometimes her dreams made her wake up with a gasp that was anything but terror.

She didn’t ask about the scars. He’d told her enough. Some were new ones she recognized from the war, and some older ones from the final patrons, the end of the line where Snow had sold him off to anyone who’d pay, for whatever purposes they wanted, and hadn’t even bothered with the expense of sending Haymitch to Remake.

As she sat down beside him, she stared at four thin, straight, parallel scars running along the groove of his back just below between his shoulders, as if he’d been raked by claws. What sort of sick— No, she was all too aware.

“What, are you enjoying the view?” he inquired archly, turning his head and staring at her over the curve of his shoulder. She felt him tense, ready to fight her or flee. “Or are you trying to figure out the best place to stab someone in the back? Kidneys.”

“C’mon. You know I’d stab people to their face,” she reminded him, and his low chuckle rewarded her, and that seemed like a sign he was all right to go ahead. Climbing on and carefully straddling his hips, she felt as he suddenly went rigid as a board beneath her. He never made a sound, though, and he didn’t thrash, didn’t fight her off. He just endured, body trembling the entire time, breath suddenly gone ragged. She could see his fingers clutched tightly in the covers. 

She could imagine all too well what had happened to him the times he’d had to lie there face-down on a bed for a Capitolite, and felt their weight pressing him down into the mattress. Hurriedly she climbed off, waited for the strung-tight tension in him to relax even a bit, for him to stop shaking. She didn’t say anything initially, didn’t lie to him and tell him it would be OK, because every fucking time she panicked at something he did, it only made it worse to have what felt like pity. She just waited, and didn’t leave him, didn’t touch him. “Haymitch?” she asked finally when his breathing slowed, saw him lift his head and look at her without that thousand-yard stare he must have worn minutes ago. “Sorry. I didn’t…”

He waved a hand dismissively. “It’s all right.” Obviously he didn’t want to dwell on it. “Carry on, huh?” She’d give him points for guts. Sitting by his side wasn’t the best vantage, but obviously sitting on him was too much today. So she put some of the lotion on her hands, put her hands on him, started to try to rub the tension out of his muscles, carefully at first, applying more pressure as she felt him start to relax into her touch, accepting it.

“You’re as knotted up as a piece of junk pine,” she told him wryly, pressing hard into the particularly tense muscles of his shoulders, trying to work them loose.

His only reply was a slight rumble of acknowledgement, apparently too wary even for words. It took a while for him to unwind, and it wasn’t just due to the physical tension. But feeling him gradually ease under her hands, the rigid wariness slowly yielding to a supple relaxation bit by bit, felt good. She could give him that. He could trust her this much. Her turn for this tomorrow—she let herself imagine lying here on the bed with those strong, clever hands working on her back. It wouldn’t be easy for her either. But she could imagine it with anticipation now as well as the low current of anxiety. That was progress.

Finally he let out a soft little whistle that sounded almost like a thready half-snore and she stared at him, incredulous, seeing his cheek pillowed on his crossed arms, his eyes closed. She’d heard his breathing go deep and even, felt the difference in his body, but she hadn’t recognized he’d actually fallen asleep. Glancing at the clock, she startled slightly—she’d been at it for over an hour. It hadn’t seemed nearly that long, focused on him as she’d been.

She looked at him for a minute, shaking her head and smirking in spite of herself. “So, I’m that good, huh?” she said finally, leaning down and kissing him lightly on one shoulder before she climbed off the bed. He never stirred, even at that, though he was normally a sleeper so light that anything readily woke him. Small wonder—he’d been pushing himself to exhaustion again. 

Good enough to make him lay aside his fears, anyway, and as she let him sleep, she watched him for a moment. So maybe they had a long way to go yet. But the vulnerability of him asleep stretched out like that, trusting her to watch over him and keep him safe, and the peaceful look on his face, was a memory she’d treasure.


	45. Shad+Johanna, stressed (for Sweet-suzume)

Nobody told her that two little kids, only fourteen months apart, would sometimes make her think that animals that ate their young might actually be onto something. That was what she got for having been at such a remove from everyone in Seven for the years of her maturity—before her Games, struggling with all the trials and immediate issues of adolescence, she didn’t much notice the women with kids in that knowing way that she would have later.

It wasn’t that Haymitch didn’t help. If anything he was far more eagerly involved in parenting than most men were, even the lousy parts. She’d seen the temporary marks of impatience and exhaustion on his face, smoothed over when he looked at Walt or June and looked beyond the crying and the crap-filled diapers, and seemed to listen to something deeper than the frazzled nerves. She could easily guess what it was, probably because unlike all the younger men around them who took their chance at marriage and fatherhood as a virtually assured right and thus took it for granted, he’d genuinely thought it would never happen. To him, even more than to her, she sensed the children would always be a gift rather than an expected right, and that would help outweigh the stress. 

But sleepless nights for a man past forty took their toll harder, particularly for a man who was still something of an insomniac on the best of nights, and one whose work as territorial governor added to that burden. Sometimes that meant the burden fell a bit on her simply so he could get some sleep. Right now, it wasn’t so bad. She was the only person awake in their house this afternoon—two children under two and a grown man of forty-four were all dedicatedly napping with equal fervor. Granted, Haymitch had doubled up on it somewhat, napping on the couch with Walt snuggled against his chest, folded safe into the crook of his father’s arm.

There was a knock at the door and she hoped it hadn’t woken anyone. But there was no cry from June upstairs, and no grumbles or fussing from the parlor. She opened the door to see Shad. Their oldest surviving victor, he’d moved in with Finnick and Annie, their own little District Four enclave, a harmless old man with his flowers and his mismatched eyes and his cracked emotions and his well-meaning but shy smiles. “How are the little ones today?” he inquired politely, handing her a pot filled with silken, bright pansies in bold purple, burgundy, and gold. “For your kitchen,” he explained.

She looked at the flowers, looked back at him. As she understood it, Shad too had been married back in Four when he was young—the desperate need of a damaged man to be comforted and accepted, even if just by one other human being. They’d never had kids, though, whether by accident or by design, and Meduse had died a good ten years back. 

“Good,” she said. “Asleep right now, but…” She could look at him and see another Haymitch that might have been, and could easily recall that yawning gulf of loneliness. “Want to come for dinner and see them, if you don’t mind the noise? Walt’s quiet as ever, but June’s got a set of lungs on her.” _Takes after her ma on that,_ Haymitch regularly quipped.

He smiled and she could see the tears brimming in his eyes—again, as they often did—but these ones were of happiness. “I’d like that very much.”


	46. Hayhanna, "wait right here, don't move" (for Dorsalfinnick)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Takes place in the Hurricane'verse

When he woke up, his entire body screamed in protest. The fire of it centered in the lower left side of his abdomen. Between that and the slight feeling of thick-headedness it felt like the time he’d gotten stung by a tracker jacket as a kid—he’d managed to hide in the river to escape the rest of them, and Burt Everdeen had helped guide him home. He’d missed school the next day for “flu”.

But it couldn’t be then. The ceiling overhead wasn’t the boards of their house in the Seam, darkened with age. Plus the throbbing pain was in the area of the wound the Capitol had repaired, the scar they stole from him to pretend as if those Games and that terror and suffering had never been. 

Confused, caught between the mingled sensations from age eleven and sixteen and the knowledge that both of those had long since receded into the past, he pushed himself up onto his elbows, turning his aching head to look around. His side flared with pain as the motion pulled at the wound. He saw the grey sheets, the stark steel walls, and people bustling around in their grey scrubs. He dropped his head back, panting with that simple effort. _Thirteen_.

“Oh, you’re awake!” a nasal voice said, and he heard footsteps approaching. “Time for your morphling dose, and some water. Wait right here, don’t move.”

“Don’t have…much choice on that,” he managed. But now that he’d remembered, he had to look frantically, hoping to see Johanna. The last memory he had was her leaning over him, a shadow blocking out the glum early winter sun, one with a mouth painted with crimson. The Capitol whore-makers had made her wear bright red lipstick—her and Enobaria both—to make people readily think of blood and both women’s vicious reputation. But it wasn’t lipstick. He’d watched the blood trickling down her chin too, heard the crackling gasp to her words as she told him to stop dying. As if he had a choice in it. 

He saw her in the next bed over now, sheets pulled up to her chest, a wan and still figure, eyes closed. The stillest he’d ever seen Johanna Mason, really, with her arms neatly at her side, legs side-by-side and stretched out strait. Even in sleep, she tended to sprawl out a bit, arms and legs thrown out akimbo and covering all the available space as if to deny the emptiness of having nobody beside her. But her chest steadily rose and fell in a strong motion as he watched. He lay back down, relieved. She was alive.

She’d held his hand until he was too weak to stay awake and the grey fog descended over his vision. She’d told him not to go.

For so many years that would have been the very best he could expect. Someone to care enough simply to be there while he died, maybe hold his hand. And even that much would have only happened if he’d died during the Games—irony, that. His world had contracted into one of solitude, and that eventually hardened around him into a defensive shell.

Even Katniss and Peeta hadn’t challenged that head-on. They’d put a few dents and chips in it, maybe a small crack. But it was always clear that he was a man they needed to help them get through situations. No promises of anything after the war, and well, he’d never pretended that they actually liked him. Katniss had always made her dislike obvious. But even Peeta’s high-handedness when the card was read had startled him. The boy’s scalding contempt, the accusations of uselessness, felt like betrayal.

He liked to think that they would have cared for him when he was old and dying, which was more than he’d have had before, but he held no illusions that it wouldn’t be in large part due to a long-standing debt finally paid. They’d simply needed him, tolerated him out of goodness or pity or whatever—they’d never really wanted him.

His last ally—his last friend who’d fought by his side—had died in the arena as he held her hand, and she’d tried to abandon him earlier simply so they wouldn’t have to murder each other. He’d never had anyone since he was a child who couldn’t be taken from him in the end by the greedy, grasping claws of the Capitol. Too many of them could be killed. Even his fellow victors, long before they became murder-bait again in the Quell, weren’t his to fully trust. Even as they drank, laughed, gave him the only human warmth and support that he could yet claim in the world, they all would have schemed to place yet another knife wound in him by targeting his latest batch of tributes. At the end of it all, if it had been a Twelve tribute and any other district in the Games, they’d have willingly cut him again because their obligations to their district outweighed even friendship. He’d wielded that knife himself in the 74th against the Career mentors to save Katniss and Peeta, had lied and betrayed friends. That was the way it was, and none of them blamed each other for it. It was friendship, perhaps even family, but even those bonds had their limits of trust. They all had people and obligations that mattered more than him. Katniss and Peeta had been just the same.

He could lie to himself and pretend that Johanna only said it because she was afraid to be left alone. But in acknowledging that much, it cut through the lie anyway by admitting that he’d been the one who challenged her assertions of proud solitude enough to matter. No, she’d _wanted_ him to stay. He’d heard fear in her voice, echoing the fear in him that he might have pushed her down too late, that she might die, that he might have failed yet another person.

She’d fought beside him, talked with him, saved his hide in the past. She’d trusted him. He could have done nothing else but try to save her too, couldn’t pretend that he didn’t care for her. 

Injuries aside, he didn’t look at her right now and feel the wild raging surge of passion. He wasn’t sure whether that part of him was hidden deep and locked up good and tight, or simply burned to ashes long ago with all the abuse of becoming a Capitol plaything. But there was something there nonetheless, steady and fierce, something he’d admitted only in those final moments when he made the comment about Peeta’s bad influence, trying for flippancy in his fear. He cared for her, more than he’d let himself care for anyone since the Second Quell. Not quite romance, but something more than mere friendship. All the tributes and all deaths in the Third Quell and since had hurt, but if he lost Johanna now, it would be far worse than any of those losses.

His world couldn’t expand enough to allow her inside that tight-fitting hard armor of his solitude, and so the shell of it split open. He’d seen a crab in Four in the shallow water, pulling itself from the ruins of its old, too-small shell. It had been a frail thing, sitting there exhausted from the effort of prying itself from the wreckage of its former self, waiting to harden up again. Soft, vulnerable, ready prey for anything might happen upon it—that was how he felt right now. Even she had the power to genuinely hurt him now.

But he wouldn’t push her away. He couldn’t. As he heard the nurse’s footsteps coming back towards him, he kept his head turned towards her, unable to look away.


	47. Haymitch + Geese, "You've got to be fucking kidding me" (for Newrageinc)

The pot on the stove burbled, squirrel stewing in there for hours already from the day’s traps—he couldn’t help enjoying every time he ate a squirrel. Maybe not the fault of innocuous wild squirrels what the Capitol had made their kin into back in the 50th Games, and it wasn’t a vicious kind of _Schadenfreude_. But he wasn’t quite above the feeling of satisfaction. Because stew meant everything was as it should be and that he existed in the real world, not the fucked-up twisted world of an arena. He ate squirrels, not the other way ‘round, and so squirrel stew became his little touchstone with reality and a promise to stay there. Between his own traps and Katniss’ hunting, he ate it several times a week.

Katniss, of course, just figured he had a thing for the taste of squirrel, and he made some flippant joke to Peeta about how he was going to figure out 50 ways to make squirrel stew, including in the style of each district. He’d actually managed most of that latter part, for that matter. Tonight was just Twelve “brown bowl”, though—carrots and onions which had always been cheap, thickened with grains, a taste comfortably familiar from his childhood. Guiltily he admitted he’d gotten spoiled enough by food in his years to add some black pepper to the blandness, though.

He chopped the carrots, intending to do a few extra to give the pieces to the geese—spoiled little shits. The sound of someone at the door made his concentration falter and with his hands unsteady, four days now since the liquor ran out, his hand slipped just as he sliced down hard through the thick end of the carrot. Swearing, wrapping a dishtowel around his cut finger, he headed to answer it.

Johanna stood there. He eyed her—it had been near to nine months now since he’d last seen her, right before they all parted ways from the Capitol. She looked physically better, her emaciated frame filled out to its old lush curves. But the air of frazzled tension and wariness was there all the same. She might have recovered physically, but her mind and soul obviously hadn’t.

Not wanting to be caught looking at her, he stared past her at the geese, honking and pattering around among the crackling autumn leaves. “Well, well. You and the kids are the first ones they haven’t attacked on coming to my door.”

“They recognize someone who can kick their asses. Seriously, why is your lawn not a sea of goose shit?”

“They crap on everyone else’s lawn instead,” he said with a trace of amused smugness. “So, is this a social call, or…”

She breathed out a low, quick sound that might have been almost a sound of pain. “Nowhere else to go,” she said it in almost a mutter. “Been living in a fucking cabin all by myself, and…tried visiting Annie, but…”

Enough said. Isolation and her best friend’s widow and newborn son obviously hadn’t helped soothe the wounds within her. At least she wasn’t high as a kite off morphling. Though the slightly bloodshot eyes, the faint whiff of something that might have been day-old booze, since she likely hadn’t brushed her teeth on the train here…fuck. With morphling expensive and hard to get, there were certainly more easily available options, local and cheap. He’d found that out years and years ago. “You been drinking?” he inquired, intending to be gentle about it, but something of his appalled fear must have shown.

She glowered at him, and the fierce rage proved that yes, some of her old fire was alive and well. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me. Like you’re in any position to judge? I saw the crates on the train marked _just_ for you, old man.” He felt the heat of embarrassment creep into his cheeks. “Don’t worry. I didn’t steal any.” 

He could almost taste it—a half-dozen crates. Especially now since the late spring, when the girl and the boy were doing better, healing with each other, he’d felt more free to reward himself for their lack of need for him. Even more so once they finished with that damn book, duty finished to the dead, and left him alone again. They turned to each other to deal with the shit they’d stirred up by it. 

Him? He had his usual wife and confidante—cheap whiskey. To his credit, he’d tried the squirrel stew and attempts to deal with reality. He was drinking _less_ , at least, and not only because Peeta nagged him about it. But sometimes it was still too much.

But the thought of the taste soured. Like looking at her in Thirteen, seeing her broken and addicted and like looking at a terrible mirror of himself, he almost wanted to tell them to send the whole lot back, if for no other reason than to not watch her falling deeper into darkness.

He had no idea what the hell he was doing here. But he opened the door anyway, feeling that lurching feeling that somehow, he had to try. She’d come here looking for something. “Got plenty of beds. You’re welcome to stick around. I advise you to avoid the kids…adorable and disgusting. Squirrel stew’s on the stove.” He waved his towel-wrapped left hand. “Might need you to do some chopping, though.”

“Yeah, well, I’m good at chopping,” she said, the first trace of a wry smile on her lips. “Got any garlic?” That night they ate squirrel stew, Seven-style, and the liquor crates stayed tucked away at the train station as they sat on the porch and threw the carrot coins to the geese.


	48. Haymitch + Peeta, "I've got one word for you: sing-a-long" (for Mitchesbcray)

Sitting on the sofa in Peeta’s basement, Haymitch looked around him and reflected wryly that fifteen years in life made a lot of different. Yes, this was the home of a kid only a couple years out of college—or culinary school, whatever. Battered sofa he’d probably gotten dumpster diving, band and movie posters on the walls, neon beer signs, and a pool table with a tilt from a slightly crooked leg. Of course, to be fair, the job market was vicious enough that even a trained pastry chef could easily end up slinging donuts and monkey bread and decorating cakes at the local bakery. 

Kid had talent. That much was obvious from the plate of pastries he’d brought down for this Sirens ref social get-together. Which, at this point, was just the three of them, given that Effie—Pearl—and the NSOs were doing their own thing tonight. 

Finnick’s eyes lit up at the food. “I made some doberge cake,” Slam said, pointing to the many-layered yellow cake, “kind of a nod to New Orleans for you, Barry. And some almond croissants. Uh…I wasn’t sure what kind of baking they might do in West Virginia, though.”

“We don’t bake a damn thing,” Haymitch quipped dryly. “You didn’t hear, Slam? We mountain folk just drink, mine coal, shoot guns, and fuck our cousins.” He could easily remember his mom baking when he was young, though. Coca Cola cake for his birthday; buttermilk biscuits, fluffy as a cloud, that gave a little curl of steam when you broke them open. Blueberry cobbler with oatmeal crumble was always one of his favorites. Seeing a blueberry muffin on the plate, he leaned forward and snagged it. “Did you bake all afternoon or what?”

“You’d think this was a date,” Finnick joked, though he was already stuffing a bit of the doberge into his mouth. “Or are you just practicing on us to see if you can impress Mockingslay with your baking next?”

“Ha ha,” Peeta muttered, putting down a cold 12-pack of Coke beside the coffee table. “Though the way you and Lizzie are going, you’d better come to me for the wedding cake rather than just eloping,” he warned Haymitch. It was a weak jab, but Haymitch gave him credit for trying it at all. 

“You can drink beer around me, you know,” Haymitch said dryly, ignoring the comment about him and Johanna, just as Peeta pointedly ignored the one about Katniss. “I may not have it at my place when you come over, but ain’t a problem if you want to have it at your places. You’ve seen I won’t grab it out of your hands.” Especially if it was Bud Light, which he suspected was the case given Peeta’s taste at the bar. Haymitch had always been the kind of drunk who didn’t mess around with beer, let alone shitty beer. He’d been far more concerned with finding whatever could get him drunk the quickest. And while being around drinkers was always a slight temptation, he could handle it most times. If he was in a mood where being around serious drinking was too much, like some after-parties, he simply didn’t go. 

“I’m fresh out, actually,” Peeta said with an apologetic glance at Finnick. Whether that was true or a graceful lie, Haymitch wasn’t sure, but he appreciated the solidarity anyway. “Besides, even Bud seems to be jacked up in price.”

“True,” Finnick answered with a sigh. “Everything’s shitty out there in the economy. At least Gran Mags lets me live with her for doing errands and around-the-house stuff. Don’t have to touch the nest egg for me and Annie.”

Looking around Peeta’s place, Haymitch was pretty sure the idea of a “nest egg” was lamentably laughable to him. But then, from comparing a few notes, he’d grown up even poorer than Peeta had, in a sort of shabby “genteel” poverty, always struggling on the edge of solvency. Haymitch’s folk had been below-the-line, bedrock poor, no question about it.

Finnick may not have been a trust fund brat by any means, and Haymitch was well aware he worked damn hard. But his parents had paid for his college, left him a tidy sum when they died, given him a cushion to have time to “find himself”. He bore the hallmarks of a man who as a boy had grown up quite comfortable middle-class, never left in want or uncertainty. 

Exchanging a glance with Peeta, Haymitch tried to communicate to Peeta that he understood what it was like to have to price-watch so hard that a matter of a couple of dollars one way or another affected a man’s buying choices, and self-denial was a matter of course.

He also suspected the stuff they were eating now was the unsold daily leftovers from the bakery, rather than Peeta having to spend all the money on the ingredients to bake at home just for a social to-do. But he wasn’t going to embarrass Peeta by saying so—after all, either way, the boy had made all this. Though he resolved to discreetly slip Peeta a twenty when they left, and also to let him know that if he ever needed help with gear costs or the like, as head ref, Haymitch would happily help out on the sly and nobody would ever be the wiser. Be a damn shame to lose a good ref simply because he couldn’t afford sixty bucks for new kneepads. He’d been that struggling kid once himself. Being comfortable now financially only meant it was a good idea to help someone else in some need.

Peeta nodded slightly in acknowledgment. “So, hey, I’ve got one word for you, Barry, Gin. Sing-a-long,” he said brightly, gesturing to the TV where his plastic Rock Band setup sat. Nice segue as distraction, Haymitch would admit.

“That’s three words,” Finnick argued, but he reached for the microphone. “Yeah, we’re not letting you sing, Slam. I’ve heard you at karaoke night.”


	49. Hayhanna, derby+ABBA (for Honeylime08)

Mayhem told Johanna that intake would begin in three weeks—and that it would take a good six months or more for her to actually get the skills to pass her minimum skill levels and make the team. So when Haymitch, still giving that knowing smirk and enjoying having hooked her on roller derby, suggested that they go to the open skate session that Friday and let her start to practice, since they were off duty, she was dumb enough to accept.

After pleading with her Jeep to hold on until after and she’d fill the gas tank she’d forgotten to fill on her last three trips out the door, it struck her, on the way there, that this was the first time aside from the derby game that they would have hung out on an off-duty day. As for the game, he’d been working as a ref, so it wasn’t like they’d quite done it _together_. 

He was there already, gear bag slung over his shoulder and dressed in basketball shorts and a Sirens t-shirt. “I’m more free advertising for freshmeat intake,” he said dryly, nodding to the flyer also posted on the wall. “Let’s get you some pads.”

“Pads?”

“Pads. They keep some for the freshies. Mayhem said you could borrow ‘em tonight. Most derby folks don’t skate at all without at least some pads on.” She glanced out at the skaters on the floor, not seeing any of them wearing pads. As if reading her mind, he said dryly, “Or you can be stupid and proud and end up with a broken wrist or banged-up knees for a week, while trying to haul the gurney. Your choice.”

She ended up with a set of kneepads, elbow pads, and wristguards, all funky-smelling and a bit ragged. Wrestling them on, wishing she hadn’t worn jeans, and lacing on the ugly tan rental skates, she watched him easily put on his own gear, including the low-cut black skates like she’d seen all the rest of them. “So when can I buy some decent shit?” she grumbled.

“Once you start freshmeat and they know you’re gonna stick it out, they’ll advise you to get gear,” he said, tugging the last of his laces into place and looping them through each other to help lock them in place. “I’m sure one of the girls will take you to the derby shop.”

She bristled at that. “I’m not gonna quit.”

He looked at her and gave her another of those smiles, but there was more amusement and less mockery in it. “No, don’t think you will.”

Although ten minutes into it, picking herself up yet again by clutching the wall, she certainly thought about it. Even her years of skating hockey didn’t help her here like she thought, since it had been almost ten years since then, and the balance was all different. She kept pitching forward on her face, making his warnings about wearing the kneepads and wristguards woefully accurate. As for stopping, figuring out how the hell to stop on the damn roller skates without ice skate’s clear edges was beyond her brain right then. If she tried a hockey stop she’d probably just keep rolling, or break her ankle. 

And of course, there Haymitch was, hovering and circling her like some damn buzzard, keeping a watchful eye and making suggestions. His every stride, every move from forward to backwards, every slow-down and stop, looked utterly effortless and smooth. If the skates hadn’t been so damn heavy that she might have broken his leg, she would have possibly had an irrational, childish desire to kick him in the shins. The music didn’t help, a mix of current hits and old-school nostalgia. Who the fuck played “Blurred Lines”—guaranteed to irritate her—around a bunch of little kids? Jesus Christ.

A half hour in, some things finally clicked and she could take some genuine strides rather than shuffles, even daring a clunky crossover or two, though she still wobbled, finding the new center of balance. Little kids constantly rushing by her or getting right in her way didn’t help either. Picking herself up yet again, rubbing her smarting thigh, she saw the black skates with their and bright green wheels come into her vision again. “Suggestions, genius?” she said grouchily, ignoring the hand he offered, determined to pick herself back up. Good thing she wasn’t working tomorrow. She’d be waddling around her apartment with icepacks taped to her legs at this rate.

“Sit back more.” As she got up, he held out his hands. “Here. Grab ‘em.” She stared at him dubiously. “I’m not gonna whip you, for Chrissakes.”

“Oh, you’re into that?” she joked.

“A _derby_ whip, you pervert,” he grumbled. “You’re Minnesotan or Canadian or whatever—aren’t they supposed to be nice?”

“I’m both.” She smiled sweetly at him. “Guess I’m the exception.” But she grabbed his hands, as best as their mutual wristguards would allow. Skating backwards, he kept barking orders at her and it seemed to be a litany of _get lower get lower get lower sit back more get lower you’re coming up sit back down like you’re in a chair._ Still, with him to brace her, she didn’t feel as much like she would topple backwards if her weight went back a little. 

Then they hit a string of cheesy oldies. By the time ABBA’s “Take A Chance On Me” came on, her thighs protested the constant squat, but it was like every open skate at the ice rink she’d been in back as a schoolgirl, and for a moment she remembered her dad holding her hands like this, guiding her around the rink.

And of course, the idiot was singing along teasingly, turning the lyrics into “Take A Chance On Derby”, smirking at her as if to invite her to share the joke. It was a side of him she hadn’t seen, a man who was obviously having fun, and it surprised her. “You’re such a hick,” she grunted, managing a smooth crossover with him as her counterweight, “that they probably played ABBA at your fucking _prom_.”

The smile faltered a little. “Didn’t go to mine.” She’d forgotten about his girlfriend who died when he was in high school, along with his family. She didn’t know yet whether he’d been put with a foster family or stayed with grandparents or what, or whether he’d been at the same school still, but obviously he hadn’t wanted to go without her.

She’d been doing her best to not stare down at her feet, but it meant looking somewhere in the region of his shoulders and chest in case she did need to look down. Now she dared to look up at his eyes for more than a momentary glance at his face. “Me either.” It seemed so pointless with her world shattered.

He nodded at that, slowly skidding them to a stop right near the exit off the floor. “You wanna go get a drink somewhere? Or more like, I’ll get a Coke and you get whatever you want.”

“This a date, Abernathy?” she asked, suddenly defensive. “Skating, drinks, you hoping for a screw or two once you get me liquored up a bit?” Was he really just angling to get in her pants with all of it?

“You want it to be?” he fired right back sharply, and she wasn’t sure whether he was being serious or just equally defensive to put her off her guard. “And I don’t even kiss women who’ve been drinking, let alone sleep with them.”

“Principle or the taste of it?” she inquired archly.

He scowled, throwing his pads back into his gear bag with a little more force than was needed. “I’ve hauled my share of drunk or roofied rape victims out of alleys and dorms and club bathrooms, sweetheart. I’ve seen the way they look when they realize what was done to ‘em.” There was a strange anger there that she didn’t quite understand, but she wished he hadn’t brought it up like this. “I don’t take advantage like that. And I’d rather a woman want me without the need for beer goggles.” She noticed he didn’t address whether the taste of liquor on a woman’s lips might not be a bad reminder, though she suspected it might. “So no, _Mason_ , I’m not looking for sex. Jesus. If I wanted a meaningless lay—and I’m not—I’d sure as hell do it outside my coworkers besides.”

“Point,” she had to acknowledge. “Sorry.” It was all the apology he would get from her. When he didn’t say anything for a few more minutes as they finished dealing with the gear, she finally asked, “You still wanna go somewhere?”

“Good pizza at Gino’s,” he offered, tense shoulders finally relaxing, his tight jaw easing as well.

She couldn’t resist smirking at him, though deep down she was relieved that she hadn’t cut him too deeply unaware and apparently he would brush it off. “Trust a paramedic to know all the good local joints for cheap.”


	50. Hayhanna, first time (for Anon)

Something made him go still, an impulse greater than the increasing need for harder, faster, deeper, now that they’d found that sweet spot where they moved together rather than at cross-purposes. Something—it was a need far deeper than the physical ache, although even that genuine feeling of desire fair to overwhelmed him, given that for so many years sex had been all about finding a way to manage to perform despite his disgust for whoever he was with right then. 

He paused, looking down at her. There was a war on yet. Tomorrow morning they’d have to get up and put all of this away, and turn back to the fight. She wouldn’t complain. He was a lucky man, to have a woman like this whose mind and priorities matched his. But for tonight…he was finally a free man. All debts of honor paid, all ghosts laid to rest. For the first time, someone other than him would sleep in this house, in this bed.

Deep brown hair spread across his pillow, lips kiss-reddened, her skin flushed and dewed with sweat, and a few reddened patches of beard-burn where his stubble had scratched her but she’d been so caught up in it she didn’t care. Those eyes of hers, looking at him, their usual deep whiskey-brown darkened with pleasure. But it was more than that. He’d been clutched close by people who cared only how he could coax pleasure from their bodies, seen enough men and women caught up in nothing but lust to be unmoved by it.

With his stopping, her hands left where she’d been gripping his shoulders, one hand cupping the back of his neck, the fingers of the other weaving their ways through his hair and gripping there, as if their bodies pressed all together, as if him being inside her, somehow wasn’t enough, and she needed to reach out and touch him and ensure he wouldn’t pull away. 

She looked at him—saw _him_ , not simply a man she was fucking. Along with the darkening of desire in that gaze, there was a steadiness too as she met his eyes. A sudden, knowing smile curved her lips, but for once, she didn’t say anything. Wasn’t the time for sarcastic remarks. She simply looked back at him in turn, as if memorizing him in this moment as well. 

_This woman is in my bed, and she loves me._ That thought was enough that he leaned down, touched his forehead to hers, started moving again with slow, careful strokes, letting her find the rhythm with him again. Having something to live for now still came as something of a shock. But whether he died tomorrow or fifty years from now, he thought he’d easily remember her as she had looked in that moment—a woman who fiercely both loved and desired him.


	51. Hayhanna: ghosts of the past/"remind me never to ask you for a favor" (for Jeanmerilynsimmons and Alliecat-person)

She stumbled out towards the kitchen still yawning her way towards being fully awake, sniffing curiously as she paused in the doorway, smelling the rich, meaty scent of bacon in the air. Haymitch had his back turned to her, busy at the stove. “Do me a favor,” he said, not even turning around, “and get the coffee going?” 

That was an improvement. Sensing someone there behind him back when they first started sharing space? That would have had him lunging to grab that knife from the chopping board and turn on her.

“Clever boy,” she answered with a smirk, with her voice still a little sleep-hoarse. “You know if I get coffee, I don’t get the urge to kill anyone.” But already she moved to the coffee maker, reaching for the tin canister and the scoop, measuring the grounds out into the filter. She inhaled the deep, dark, earthy scent of the coffee.

“It isn’t the rules that’re the worst about Thirteen, it’s the lack of coffee?” he quipped.

Dumping the coffee in, she groaned. “Don’t remind me. Winter’s gonna be here before we know it.” It meant more time with Vick, Posy, and Lindy, which would be a blessing. But until the war’s field operations resumed again in the spring with better weather, it meant being subject to Thirteen’s rules: living belowground, no fresh air, no coffee, and no freedom. Last winter practically drove her nuts. At least she knew better what to expect this time, and with making plans for an assault on the western districts and worrying about the kids, she’d keep busy this winter.

But there was no privacy either, living in a family compartment with three kids snoring away within earshot. And an hour every week faithfully scheduled for married couples in a sparse “conjugal privacy cubicle” wasn’t exactly conducive to great sex. 

Even with the risks of fighting the war, freedom felt all the finer for those months of the year she didn’t have it.

With that thought, as she flicked the “on” button for the coffeemaker, her eyes moved speculatively to Haymitch’s turned back, watching the flex and dip of his shoulders beneath his t-shirt as he flipped the eggs in the pan, the untidy dark curls of his hair, still damp from the shower. She waited until he’d put the pan aside, slipping behind him, touching him lightly on the shoulder in warning and saying, “So, it’s not winter yet…”. He might not have reached for that knife for her standing in the doorway, but she wasn’t willing to bet quite yet on such a relaxed response to her suddenly grabbing him from behind. They were working up to things.

“Thanks for stating the obvious,” he said with a fond amusement. “You, me, and the shrink all know I’ve got some loose marbles rattling around up there some days, but crazy ain’t the same as senile.” But he turned to her, looking her up and down, and one dark eyebrow arched up slightly. “Got a couple months yet before winter, don’t we?”

“Yeah, we do,” she said, reaching up, hands cradling his face to hold him steady for a moment as she stood on tiptoe to kiss him, hands then dropping to his shoulders to help brace herself up. His hands ended up down on her hips as he kissed her back, but before long, as things intensified, he wrapped his arms around her, drawing her in tightly. It was a September morning outside, and she’d shivered after throwing the blankets back, but the kitchen was warm and so was he, his body a big wall of solid heat against her, and the fire now lit between them made her feel even warmer for it.

He was solid in more than one way, she thought with a smirk, pressing her hips against his, teasing him with the contact. She broke off the kiss, though her lips were still almost against his as she said, “Oh, look who’s awake.” 

“Fuck’s sake, don’t make a sausage joke, Hanna, you can do better,” he muttered, before he ghosted his lips across hers in a fleeting sensation that she instinctively leaned into, craving more. Instead he suddenly lifted her up, motion seeming effortless, took a few steps, and placed her up on the kitchen counter across from the stove. She looked at him, enjoying being able to easily look him in the eye now, and the roguish gleam she saw in those grey eyes was more than enjoyable as well.

The old cherry wood countertop was satin-smooth beneath her hands, warming quickly to her touch, unlike the cool Two granite that made her countertop in Victors’ Glade. One good thing about having Seven people build the cabins of the command post—they’d understood her wanting to help out with the work, and give it a personal flair. “Good thing the wood is well-finished,” he said, giving her a knowing smirk. “The Phoenix laid up from getting splinters in her ass?” He let out a low whistle, shaking his head.

“Plutarch would make an inspiring propo where somehow, my inability to sit becomes an injury bravely sustained in the line of duty.” He laughed at that, a low rumble of amusement, even as she tugged at the hem of his t-shirt and he reluctantly took his hands from her hips long enough for her to pull it off him. “So,” she said, leaning her weight back on her hands as he tossed the t-shirt somewhere behind him, knowing the arch of her back put her breasts on better display, “this is very nice, you offering to help me test the counter for holding weight and checking for splinters.”

“So tell me, this is how married folk flirt in Seven?” He leaned in, kissing her—throat, pulse point, collarbones, one breast and then the other, his hands roving down her body to the waistband of her pajamas.

“Maybe,” she said smugly, taking the opportunity to scoot closer to the edge of the counter, lifting her hips slightly to allow him access to get the trousers off. Kicking them off a little clumsily, she returned the favor, mouth and tongue roving over the hard curves of his shoulders, the planes of his chest, impatiently shoving his undershorts down.

It was all still new enough to scorch through her like wildfire—that she was naked and perched on a kitchen countertop with her legs hooked around Haymitch Abernathy’s thighs to pull him in closer, with him _right there_ wanting her, kissing her like he couldn’t get enough. Every time it was like he was letting out everything he’d held back in all those lonely and frustrated years, every single longing he’d had for human contact and affection and been denied. The sheer intensity of it should have scared her shitless but instead it only drew her in, because it meant she could let go too.

He stopped, and his hand shook slightly as he brushed a lock of hair out of her eyes and kissed her again, only for a moment—something deeper, slower, than the frenzy of passion. 

Then he looked right at her, so easy to do with the countertop helping make up for their height differences. His face, olive skin flushed with arousal rather than drink or anger, eyes steady on hers. She could feel his cock pressing against her, her body aching with the need for him. 

They’d been taken by force enough, battered and threatened into submission, that when they’d started working their way through the issues, they’d both noticed that slight hesitation. Old ghosts and the pain they brought might be dealt with, and they’d both come so far already. But the scars would remain. There likely would always be this moment where they both paused and reassured themselves, and asserted to each other, that even at that desperate fever pitch right before he pushed in or she took him in, either of them could stop it. They could say “No”. 

He didn’t kiss her again, didn’t move. It was always the one who held more control of things that particular time that asked. She’d asked him this same question more than once, leaning over him, thighs trembling with the effort of keeping still. He simply asked, eyes watching hers, “Yes?”

“Yes,” she answered, and the moan she made as he filled her got muffled against his shoulder. She wrapped her arms and legs around him, holding him in close, and he gave her no respite in return, hands gripping her hips and his strokes hard and fast.

When she finally came back down, the coffeepot angrily made gurgles telling her the water reservoir was completely empty. “Sounds like the coffee’s done,” she murmured, eyes drifting closed as she ran her fingers through his hair, damp again now with sweat. But neither of them moved just yet. As he nuzzled her neck with a languid motion and a low hum of contentment, he answered, voice a bit thick, “Bacon’s probable stone-cold. Never reheats well either. Gonna be dry as shoe leather.” He let out a low hum of contentment that she felt within her as well as heard, with his arms now around her and her chest pressed against his as it was. “Remind me never to ask you for a favor again in the kitchen.”


	52. Hayhanna: "you can't protect me" (for Purple-cube)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hurricane'verse, during the first winter of the war.

The wound still hurt her sometimes, a twinging ache deep in Johanna’s lungs if she inhaled too deeply, and tromping around the winter forest meant that was readily the case. She didn’t ask Haymitch if his gut wound hurt sometimes too for him, though she suspected it must. Still, pain meant she was alive. That was something. Maybe there was something to be said for it. They’d gotten by without Katniss, and the war could certainly do without her. It wasn’t like a single person was the fulcrum on which the entire thing turned. Enough people out there had decided to stand up and fight. Even if she died, it was far too late to stuff them all in an arena. So if her death wouldn’t stop the war, was her continued presence in the fight all that necessary?

She walked beside Haymitch, fingers clenching inside her coat pockets. It was tempting. Now there was something more than getting a taste of justice or vengeance or both, and generally making them pay for it. She had Vick, Posy, and Lindy to think of now, and Haymitch too…her eyes strayed to him. He walked along with his usual careful, silent tread, but he didn’t look around as much as usual. It seemed his thoughts, like hers, turned inward. “We’ll have to give Coin an answer on that soon enough,” Haymitch said finally. “She’s got us pretty neatly wrapped up in a protective blanket.” 

She found an old log that didn’t look half-rotten and sat down. “D’you think she’s doing it out of goodwill?” she said sarcastically.

He sat down right beside her, letting out a low sigh as he stretched out his legs in front of him. His left boot had a scuff near the arch. “Not for a damn moment. She wants us under her thumb and off the cameras so that when this thing finally gets won, we’ll have long since faded from people’s minds.”

“Gonna be another year on campaign at least, I’d say.”

“If not more—the more we gain, the harder they’ll hold on to what they have and reinforce it.” He smiled grimly. “Did we honestly think we’d win this war in two months just because we’re _right_? They’re better armed, better trained, and better supplied.”

She laughed at that, though she inhaled a cold blast of air that sent her coughing, and he put an arm around her shoulders, helping brace her as she hacked and wheezed. “We could retire from the field with that medical excuse,” she said when she finally recovered her breath. “Nobody would say we haven’t done our part. We paid hard all those years we were mentors. We helped get the war going. We almost died and they all saw it. We’ve got kids to think about now too, and they’ve already lost one set of parents.”

He picked up on where she was going easily, and as she’d hoped, he readily provided the counterpoint. “But if we do retire, it looks like we’re victors getting special treatment. And this can’t be just a war of single, childless folk. There are plenty of people out there with spouses and kids who still take the risk and go to war anyway. Because they know they have to do it. Maybe it’s better to love your children enough to die fighting for a better world for them than live and see them inherit same old shit-heap.” 

She looked at him, seeing that steady grey gaze on her, and the crackling tension of what neither of them would quite say. _If we retire, you’ll be safe. Maybe we can have a chance then._ With all that they gave to the war and the kids now, and then the pieces carefully held back for fear of loss—if they hung up the rifles and took on the nice, safe strategy job, would they finally be able to open that door? She’d felt something shift between them lately, been aware of the way he looked at her sometimes now. It stoked the ache within her even more to imagine that maybe that part of his heart and soul had come back to life, as it had for her. He loved her. She hadn’t doubted that, but maybe now he also wanted her. But she wouldn’t push him. She’d promised him, and herself, that.

“Well, maybe you need someone to tell you to step back.” But that was Haymitch. He’d risk himself heedlessly for his own, the sort of man who’d never ask anyone to do something he wouldn’t do himself. That was her answer, wasn’t it? “You won’t let anyone protect you, because you’re too damn busy looking after everyone else.” 

If she asked, prevailed on his honor and his heart to claim pride of place for her and the kids over the cause, she could do it. But ever after, he’d feel the sting of disgrace. 

Besides, she wouldn’t let fear get in her way. She had something to lose now, but she hadn’t let fear get in her way before. There was no other person on Earth she’d sooner have by her side, in battle or anywhere else. It wasn’t the war that kept him from her. She could have him, and still fight. It meant accepting the risks, opening her heart up to the chance that he might be injured again, or killed. The vivid memory of him lying there, dying, seared through her. In that moment, all the fear had been for him, not for herself. But the alternative—keeping him forever at arm’s length, or hiding in the safety of Thirteen and letting others do the dirty work—that was unthinkable.

His eyes were solemn enough, but a faint smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. “That’s who I am, darlin’.”

“I know. But get it through your skull—I’m looking after you now.” She reached over and took his hands in hers, needing that small bit of contact. “That’s what we do, you and me—we’ll protect each other. We’re stronger for it.” That was true even back when they hadn’t acknowledged it as such. But this was so much more now than drinks and the ability to openly complain. “You really want to stuff me away somewhere safe in order to do it?”

“No,” he admitted. “It’s harder when it’s not you getting hurt, yeah?” She nodded, acknowledging the truth of that. “But I can’t ask you to not care and to not fight, because the woman I—“ He hesitated, and she didn’t take it as an insult that the word “love” still didn’t rise easily to his lips. “I can’t ask you to be other than as you are.” Damn him anyway. After the years of lies and loathing, if there was anything he could have said to melt her a bit, telling her that would do it. “And as for you, you can’t protect me from everything, Johanna.” She couldn’t protect him from every danger at war. She certainly couldn’t protect him from herself, and all the risk that came from loving her. 

He kept looking at her steadily. Obviously he knew her well enough to know that her mind had already been made up. This hadn’t been so much a discussion about going to war as confirming it with each other, and tentatively asking where they wanted things to go between them. “All of it’s a risk, coming out of the shell. But I’ve spent long enough with my hands tied I’d rather answer for the risks I’ve taken than the ones I haven’t.”

She still felt so naked and vulnerable sometimes that it scared the shit out of her. But she leaned in, touched her forehead to his, felt the warmth of his breath against her cheek and the grasp of his fingers in her own. She wasn’t alone. The nearness of him was a comfort rather than awkwardness, and she felt the fire of his presence being something more than mere comfort quietly stoked. 

That edge was right there if they were ready to fall. But she’d jumped the gun too much and only hurt herself or others by it. She needed some more time too, to be honest. But she felt the change in him as she had in her, recognized the lithe tension of willing restraint rather than the frozen rigidity of instinctive fear that had been there before. He loved her, that wasn’t in doubt, but he’d started to want her as well. Rather answer for the risks taken, indeed—that was as good as a promise from him. 

They’d be together, in love and in war. That didn’t seem like a bad way to go, if it came to it. She kissed him lightly on the cheek and drew back. “So we’ll take some risks. Let’s tell Coin that we _very much appreciate_ the gracious offer,” she couldn’t resist the sarcastic edge to her voice, “but we’re ready to go to the winter town and take back Seven.”


	53. Hayhanna: Valentine's Day (for Jlalafics)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> EMT/Derby'verse.

Valentine’s Day turned out to be a gift in that being deeply shorthanded, for the first time since they’d declared the relationship and accepted being sent to different ambulances, Johanna actually rode with him rather than with Blight. “Understand that this is a one-shift deal because we’re desperate. I’m trusting you both because you’ve been responsible and by-the-book here, more than most. You’ve kept it out of my station house. So keep it professional tonight and do _not_ get my ass in a bind,” Heavensbee said, wagging a finger at them.

“I’m not going to screw him on the gurney, sir,” Johanna said dryly, already picking up her jump bag, giving him an excited grin as they headed for the ambulance bay.

It meant while other couples were pulling out the prime rib and lobster, their Valentine’s dinner was hastily chowing down sliders and fries at White Castle. Other couples were busy in their beds getting lucky while they struggled in the February cold to wrestle the gurney down five flights of stairs for a girl with a broken leg.

Of course, it also meant that they came back with the story of the two engaged guys they ran in, one with a broken penis from being ridden a bit too vigorously, and the other with a dislocated shoulder from getting flung off his fiancé to the floor at said breakage, because they had gotten a little too frisky that night. They admitted they were celebrating their engagement after a lovely dinner, and he and Johanna offered congratulations. He tried to hold his own breath as much as possible given the reek of wine on their breath. But the way they held hands in the back of the gurney, all tenderness even in their pain and sheepishness, was touching. 

The night ended with mostly mild calamities, and as dawn broke across another chilly winter morning, they headed back to his house. They were tired enough that they just showered and curled up in his bed, though. 

Starting a fire in the fireplace, Johanna ordered the pizza. “I’ve thought about it,” she said, unconsciously rubbing her elbow. She’d broken it over the summer after only a few months as a player and been forced off skates, and ended up miserable at the station as well due to her limited mobility. “I can’t afford to get injured bouting.” She sighed in a short, sharp exhalation. “I love derby. But I need the job, and I can’t go crazy sitting around for months at a time at the station because I’m laid up.”

“You’re not thinking of quitting…?”

“No. Thinking of joining you on team zebra, though. I can still skate, but chances are much lower I’ll get hurt.” She gave a little half-shrug. “If you’ll have me?”

“Of course.” 

Now she grinned mischievously. “Besides, me getting to tell people what to do? It’s a natural fit.”

He laughed at that, relieved that she wasn’t glummer about it. But then, she was always practical, and if it was her decision rather than something forced upon her by an even worse injury, she could accept it more easily. “It ain’t a come-down, you’ll see. Be glad to skate with you. Be even gladder to not have you telling me about all the bad calls I supposedly made.” She made a squawk of protest at that and leaned over him, grabbing hold of him as they mock-wrestled a bit. 

They ended up with her hands braced on his arms, close enough to kiss. But instead she leaned back and looked at him, expression almost grave. “You thought more about going through the application for rescue squad?” She cocked her head aside a bit as she asked. “Everyone at the station says you’d be a natural for it.”

“Still not sure,” he said bluntly. In some ways the ambulance was familiar, but not enough of a challenge. It was what he’d done when he burned out and couldn’t take rushing into burning houses. The three new rescue squads being incorporated into the Panem Fire Corps meant going back in the turnouts, but it meant the same thing that had put him on the ambulance to begin—thinking about saving lives as his primary goal. As he’d told her the day they’d met, it was never about the fire.

“I’ve been thinking again about going to the academy so I can join rescue,” she said bluntly. “Different squad from you, of course, since you’d be a lieutenant for sure, probably make captain quick enough. But…” 

He stretched up to kiss her. “I’ll do it if you will,” he said, recklessly committing himself to the future rather than the past. 

“Done,” she said. 

They sat on the couch and ate pizza, watched the Indiana Jones trilogy. No pretense, not having to try to impress each other—nothing to prove. Best Valentine’s Day he’d had since he was in high school, by far. “Didn’t get you flowers,” he said, “but hopefully this will do as a bouquet.” He handed her a package.

She opened it to see the eight black-and-turquoise wheels within. “You know the way to this girl’s heart,” she said with a smirk. 

“You like your wider wheels, and those will be nice and stable if you want to work on pack ref,” he told her lazily.

She tossed him a chunky package wrapped hastily in newspaper. “Here. Looks like we thought alike. Happy Valentine’s Day. You said you needed some new wheels for jam reffing.”

So nice that the two of them could think in accord—he unwrapped the paper and gave a snort of amusement at the name and art on the slim red wheels. “You’re giving me Heartless wheels, darlin’? That some kind of commentary on our relationship?”

“They’re even Heartless _Breakers_ ,” she informed him gleefully.

Given how anti-Valentine’s Day they declared they both were, he could appreciate the humor in her choice. Although his own was equally snarky. He indicated the edge where a design of white and turquoise gems was printed. “After I went all out and bought you a whole mess of Tiffany Diamonds like a good boyfriend ought.” She laughed at that long and loud at that.

There had been so many changes in his life over the past year, but he couldn’t regret them in any way. She was one change he wanted to be there for good. Maybe there was room and courage left in him for one last shift in things today. “Seeing as I gave you the Diamond here, eight times over in fact…so, will you?” he asked. Casual and humorous as he’d tried to sound about it, he was well aware that she could easily hurt him in that moment.

Her eyes went wide in shock. “Yeah,” she said the word softly, looking at him the whole while. “Of course.”


	54. Haymitch/Johanna, "humiliated" (for Eleganceofhope)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hurricane'verse

As they stepped into his room, Finnick turned to them and his green eyes glittered, something dark and almost feral there—-that look that Johanna identified as “victor”, because she’d seen it on the face of a fourteen-year-old boy as he ruthlessly hunted down other tributes, helpless, unsponsored. But there was a look of crafty deliberation there as well. Victors were always the most dangerous animals, with violence married to cunning.

He waggled the stump at them, and she tried to not wince as she imagined once again exactly what had been done to him to cost him more than half his left arm. “Oh, pardon me if I don’t get up,” he said, half-rising with the clack of chains pinning him to the chair. “But on the bright side, I’m used to restraints by now.”

She wanted to turn away, felt her eyes stinging with hot, angry tears, but shoved them back down. “Finn…if there’s anything that I can…” 

He snarled at that, and suddenly the book he was reading went flying past her head to crash against the wall. “Don’t do me any favors, Phoenix,” he sneered, features twisted into a mask of ugliness by his rage. “You did me plenty already.”

“Finnick,” Haymitch spoke up beside her. “C’mon, you know this is the Capitol fucking with your head.”

“Oh, wait your turn, old man,” Finnick said, eyeing Johanna directly, sitting back in his chair and crossing his arms as well as he could, right arm gripping the stump of the left. “I’ll give you credit. I didn’t imagine you’d have that kind of spider-patience to wait years on it. But you just couldn’t stand being rejected by me, could you, sweetness? Couldn’t stand the thought that I’d fucked you, over and over, and decided that was all you were good for in the end?”

It was like being naked, except feeling exposed in far more than her body. “It wasn’t…”

“And you,” now a dismissive nod towards Haymitch, “look at you, figuring if I was dead maybe she’d finally be yours.” He flashed Haymitch an ugly smirk of triumph. “You’ve always been the smart one. You knew she’d never touch the likes of you so long as I was alive, didn’t you? You may have had her first, but she never came back, and good reason, especially what you turned into. Forty-year-old disgusting drunk versus me—no contest, old man. Didn’t even matter I had someone else back home. All I’d have had to do was snap my fingers,” and he exaggeratedly clicked the fingers of his right hand, “and she’d have been back in my bed, panting and moaning for me.”

She swore she could feel Haymitch flinch by her side, even if she didn’t see it. In that moment she hated Finnick for this, more than for the damn bullets he’d put into them, because he directly attacked that trust between them and tried to turn it into something tawdry. “Oh, Finnick,” Haymitch said, cynical coldness in his voice, “don’t make us regret keeping you alive after you tried to murder us both. And really, you should think of Annie here—she’s suffering seeing you like this.”

Finnick smiled that twisted grin again. “She comes here. We talk. We’re both crazy now, so we’re a perfect fit. And you should regret keeping me alive. I shot you.”

“As you noticed, we’re still alive. You’re a shitty shot at point blank range,” Johanna replied, old instinct at the fear and humiliation making her lash out with sarcasm. ”And I’m not a damn piece of meat for you two to fight over.”

“Go easy on me. It was my first time with a gun.” He laughed, an uneven sound that made her shiver. “But I came close, and I’ve left my mark on both of you, haven’t I? That’s more intimate than fucking ever could be. You’ll never forget it.” She fought the urge to touch her chest where the bullet had ripped through, not wanting to give him the satisfaction of seeing he’d gotten to her. “Give me a trident, even one-handed, and I won’t make the same mistake again.”

She stared at him, trying to find traces of her friend in him. This was Snow’s revenge on them—to take someone they’d both loved as a brother, in lieu of brothers they’d lost, and turn him into this. 

“Now, I’m trying to decide how quickly you’d have screwed me over in the arena if this one,” a dismissive nod towards Haymitch, “hadn’t intrigued us with that little alliance. Starting gong? First night?” His voice lowered into a hiss of rage. “So tell me, either of you, how long did you plan to fuck me over and get rid of me? And whose idea was it? Bet it was Haymitch, he’s always been the schemer, but you went right along with it, didn’t you, Johanna?”

“It’s Capitol lies,” she told him, standing her ground. “You’re really going to believe them? You didn’t see Haymitch on that hovercraft, arguing with them to stay long en—”

“Stop lying to me!” His eyes were wide, furious, teeth bared, and he spat the words as an animal growl, accompanied with flecks of actual spit. He jerked himself upright as much as the chains would let him, so forceful that she actually thought for a moment he might rip the metal bolts out. “Fuck you, fuck you both, stop lying and fight me and I’ll kill you right now! You know I won’t stop until you’re dead!” He looked like he was working himself into a state of frenzy, actually most of the way to an actual fit.

She felt Haymitch’s hand on her shoulder, his grip tight. “We’re done,” he said lowly to her, “we’re just making him worse.”

Trying to drown out the sound of Finnick’s curses and howls as they left, she shuddered, wanting to cry, wanting to hit something, wanting to go raging into battle and fight back against what had been done to him. Her chest hurt and her breath came short, as if the bullet had ripped through it freshly. Or maybe it was just her heart aching and the breathlessness of pending tears.

She turned to Haymitch after the door shut behind them and they were out of the sight of the guards, and slipped her arms around him. He didn’t hesitate, embracing her in turn, and she let herself have the luxury of a few moments simply to be comforted by his presence, trying to let Finnick’s words slide out of her mind. “We obviously set him off. If we’re his mission…the best thing we can do,” he said gruffly, “is stay away from him for right now. Let Aurelius and Annie work with him, until he’s a bit less confused.”

She nodded at that, letting him go, striving to recover her inner balance. “Yeah, you’re right. Besides, it’s time we got out of here again. Plutarch keeps yapping about how people need to see I’m OK and that we’re still fighting.”

His arm caught her down around the waist, holding her there for a moment. “Johanna.” His breath was warm against her cheek. “We’ll fight, but let’s not be reckless.” He drew back and looked her right in the eyes, his grey and wary. “Neither of us. No throwing our lives away.” She drew in a breath to protest, but held the words. He was right. It would be too easy for them to go look for a fight they couldn’t win in their misery and fury at having Snow rip something else they’d loved away from them. Old habits died hard, and the thought of having nobody to answer to, no true worth, was still right there like scum on the pond surface. She’d seen that he cared enough that he would have died to protect her, and she had the kids to think about now too. It wasn’t only about her and her own emotions at this point. Finnick—or whatever shit they’d implanted in his brain—was wrong. What she had with Haymitch wasn’t tawdry. He’d been the one to help her find her feet again, cared even when she was at her darkest and lowest. She was worth far more than rejection, isolation.

She held his gaze with hers and nodded. “I’ll fight all the harder for Finnick’s sake, but no, I’m not giving Snow what he wants.”


	55. Cressida/Effie, "could you repeat that?" (for Districtunrest)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hurricane'verse

The camera shut off and as ever, Johanna stalked away as quickly as she could, as if worried that somehow she’d be contaminated by the lens, informing them, “This is stupid.” Haymitch was barely a heartbeat behind her. Effie had read somewhere that tribes of primitives long, long ago had been afraid of being photographed or videotaped because they thought it might steal their soul. Most victors seemed to act something like that. After so many years on camera, though, they ought to be used to it.

“Well, that’s that,” she said to Cressida, cheerfully as she could. “And not a moment too soon for them, I’d say?” She nodded towards the victors’ fast-retreating backs.

Cressida’s lips twitched up. “Yes, she looked as ready to throw an axe at the camera as usual. Especially with the retakes and ‘Could you repeat that?’ When she gets to rage snarls, it’s clearly time to stop.” 

Plutarch nodded in obvious satisfaction. “We’ll need that propo by tomorrow—Snow’s planning another announcement and I’d like the crash the party.” He grinned at that. Effie could well remember Plutarch Heavensbee crashing more than his share of parties in his day, and pulling the entire thing off with such panache that rather than an interloper, he became a favored guest. Daring and charm became a would-be Gamemaker, she supposed—as well as a rebel leader.

Cressida nodded idly and glanced over at Messala. “I’ll be up in the vid room, Sal. You’ve got the breakdown?” Messala, engrossed already with the camera equipment and delicately packing it away in its protective cases, gave her a thumbs-up. Plutarch gave a satisfied nod and headed away himself, presumably to deal with President Coin.

She was about ready to head back to the laundry room when Cressida’s hand on her arm stopped her. She half-turned back, seeing the other woman heft the tape in her hand. “Want to give this a view with me, Effie? I need some more eyes on it. And Beetee and Wiress will see only the tech side of it—even Sal’s like that. Plutarch’s busy, the victors obviously want nothing to do with it after filming, and people here in Thirteen, well, their imaginations are sort of…”

“Plodding?” she supplied lightly. They had no style whatsoever. Of course, she reminded herself sharply, better here in this dreary place than being perhaps locked in a Capitol prison—Cashmere had very helpfully reminded her of that not two days ago. Johanna had told her to hurry up and choose her side. It seemed she’d chosen. Her eyes were open enough now to be unable to go back and pretend it hadn’t all happened, and every battle, every propo, forced more awful truths upon her. But faced with these grim people who’d worked for this war for years, and how they judged her as a fool and a dilettante, it wasn’t easy.

Cressida’s smile was sharp, like a fox’s grin. “Exactly.” So she sat beside Cressida and watched the footage. Simple stuff, really, a few sound bites and clips to be hopefully inserted into the latest battle footage from District Seven, things that they hadn’t had time to prepare on-site.

Sitting there with Cressida’s low murmurs about lighting, timing, offering a tentative suggestion herself about where to place a particular line, she couldn’t help the excitement of being part of something. This was creating art, spectacle. Wasn’t this part of why she’d applied to escort training? To be a part of that great pageant—it was the highest thing a Capitol citizen could do. And now they looked at her like she was something a cat had vomited. Truth was, most days she felt like that now, looking back on what she’d done, what she’d ignored. “You were involved in the Games, weren’t you?” she asked Cressida suddenly. “I’d see you filming some of the events…” Those green vine tattoos seemed familiar. Besides, it would only make sense that Plutarch would have recruited a Games cinematographer, someone right by his side.

Cressida nodded, making another note on her notepad, brushing her dirty blond hair from her eyes. “Oh, yes. You quickly learn a good eye for speed and quality in editing. You’d have to turn things around that same night for a pre-Games sponsor gala and distill the highlights of it. As for the Games themselves…with all the cameras, our team always had hundreds of hours of daily footage to review, edit, condense down to a two-and-a-half hour nightly recap of the highlights.”

She’d watched those recaps in her own apartment, released from duty to Twelve once the Games began, and all too frequently released entirely by the rapid deaths of both tributes. Professional, polished—excellent work. “You’ve seen a side of the Games that few have, then.”

“So have you,” Cressida replied. She looked over at Effie, a sudden passion in her voice, her face lit up with a fierce animation, blue eyes aglow. “The districts—the real districts? The train rides with the tributes before cameras and editing? Obviously it led you to see the truth of things. That’s why you’re here.”

“I didn’t see it,” she confessed guiltily, as the tape ran out, ignored by both of them. “I…hated the Twelve tributes, truth be told. So dirty, so uncouth. So little spirit, and of course their deaths meant I’d be mocked yet again. And of course Haymitch was no better.” The man had made every year an ordeal. “It was only last year that I started to see…” See what? Something, at the very least—some worth in District Twelve, in the two children, in Haymitch’s sudden move into action on their behalf. She grieved Katniss still, truth be told, a child who should have lived her life in all its potential, and the Games she’d loved were responsible for that. They were, she reminded herself guiltily, responsible for the deaths of dreams for far more children than that.

“Mmm,” Cressida said, eyes downcast, a long sweep of lashes dark against her pale skin. No makeup at all, either—that flawless skin was entirely natural. “Well, you’re not alone in that. Two years ago I was sitting editing the nightlies and being irritated with an editing problem. The Eight boy—I don’t even know his name, I’m embarrassed to say—took thirty minutes to be eaten by an anaconda. Now, it was a tribute death and I could hardly cut it out because those were important, viewers would expect to see it. But thirty whole minutes to watch a boy get slowly devoured was a, rather boring, and b, a lot of time I couldn’t spare. So I was very pleased with myself for making it into a seamless time-lapse that made him look as though he was eaten within two minutes.”

Truth be told, Effie didn’t even remember that boy either. “I see.” Somehow it made her feel better. Cressida too had been blind to things right in front of her face—ugly little realities that made her horrified now to realize them with new perspective. “So how did you…?”

“Plutarch recruited me last year since I had the responsibility for handling all that Twelve tribute footage. Before the reaping, I figured it would be a quick exit and then back to the general film pool, assisting other district teams.” She sighed, one hand turning palm up in a helpless gesture. “I wonder now what would have happened if I’d had Three, or Eight, or Seven, where I would be today.”

“I’ve wondered what would have happened if I’d drawn the name of any other Twelve child that day, boy or girl,” Effie confessed. It was something she’d never admitted to anyone else. Perhaps if she’d drawn another name, Katniss would now be alive. But it was an ugly thought, because another girl would now be dead, wouldn’t she? And Effie wouldn’t have cared about Katniss in that case. It was like being lost in a maze of her thoughts and her guilt, and nobody cared. They’d all come to their choices long ago, so they only condemned.

Caught up in her own thoughts, she startled at the touch of Cressida’s hand on her own where it rested on the arm of the chair. But she looked up into the director’s face, seeing those pale blue eyes shining again with that intensity, watching her. Not seeming to care that Effie was without her face paint, with her mouse-brown hair showing, and dressed in cheap and ugly clothing. For the first time since she’d arrived here, someone looked at her as if she was something interesting, as if she were a person rather than a nuisance. “Yet here we both are,” Cressida said, giving her a smile. “For better or worse, we see it now. So let’s make the best of it. We’re artists, you and I. We can use that. Give the nation a real show and this time, we can help give them the truth.”

Yes, that was for the best. Use what talents she had to help atone—and with someone who’d reached out to her, perhaps there was even some hope now to look at herself in the mirror some morning and not be horrified, and at far more than her appearance. Her fingers grasped Cressida’s slim ones, and a tension in her that she hadn’t even fully recognized seemed to ease. “Shall we watch it again?” she said, nodding towards the tape. ”After all, Johanna clearly needs all the help she can get.”

The sound of Cressida’s laugh, an unlovely, unmusical snort, was something that she’d treasure.


	56. Haymitch/Johanna, "zombie apocalypse AU" (for Princess-nell)

It was never really that important how it started, was it? Bubonic plague, AIDS, Ebola, any damn epidemic and while it might be interesting scientifically to people like Dr. Beetee Latier just who Patient Zero was and exactly how the virus messed up the nervous system so that the primitive parts stayed awake and the body kept moving after the higher functions in brain died, the rest of the world really only gave a shit about the fact that there were currently a whole bunch of supposed-to-be-corpses shambling around trying to eat the living.

Wasn’t pretty to have been at the school where some of the first huge epidemics occurred. He’d seen plenty of people die since by the teeth of the walkers, but that first day lived in his nightmares, even three years later. They’d sealed off the school in response to the reports. Worst thing they could have done, really. Kids getting ripped to shreds by their fellow kiddie-zombies, and after two days saying to hell with the quarantine, it was better to get shot quickly, leading what few survivors he could find out from that horror show and using the police barriers against the zombies. Taken them out into a city meanwhile gone totally to hell, because that was how quickly the virus spread. 

Only the handful of them who’d been there that day and stuck together knew about him being at the infamous School District Twelve. Katniss and Peeta, the only two kids who’d stuck with him since. Johanna, substituting that day from over in District Seven—she’d probably been busy teaching the kids all kinds of dirty German before they all found out, her included, that she was an unstoppable terror with a fire axe. Finnick, the swim coach visiting from District Four for a meet that afternoon that had never occurred, who’d had the insane idea to use the cargo net to help their escape. He wasn’t sure if Finnick had told Annie about all of it, but if she knew, she hadn’t blabbed about it. He appreciated that.

If they did find out, his mouth might make a callous quip about cliques in high school being even more brutal than he remembered, but inside, he shuddered at the memories.  
On nights when they were safe and barricaded, and if the precious liquor supply was on hand, he had thoughts that he could drink a bit and forget that day and all the other days since. He’d been a man who drank his problems up a bit too much before that fatal day. But he’d have to get up the next day and start the whole business of fighting for survival again, which needed all his focus and will and smarts. The damn zombies wanted to eat his brains, and as the leader of their little band he needed all the cleverness he could muster to face any day’s given challenges, so no point trying to kill off some brain cells.

Tonight was a safe night. This was a rare house with secure locks and intact windows, and so long as they stayed quiet and kept the drapes drawn and used minimal light, they’d be all right. Eyes sharp and ears perked, taking one last look into the distance, he glanced out into the night, cherishing the silence and peace of it. It was almost like before, like they could pretend they were ordinary people at a cabin in the forest for a vacation away from it all, rather than a bunch of tired ragged survivors trudging on and avoiding the walkers day by day, slowly heading for the safe zone they’d heard was finally established up in Alaska. Apparently zombies hated cold. Well-guarded and electrified border fences didn’t much hurt either.

He felt a hand on his shoulder, and Johanna sat down beside him. The moonlight gleamed off the blade of the axe that sat across her lap. “You should get some sleep,” he told her quietly, not wanting to wake the others.

“You too,” she said, leaning over into him. She reached over and took his hand. Her hand was callused, but her touch was steady and confident. “Always sleep better with you there. You know that.”

He couldn’t help but smile a little. “Yeah, I know.” And she was well aware it was the same with him. It was a funny thing how the world going to hell in a handbasket clarified some things for him, but to judge from other travelers they’d met along the way, it wasn’t unusual. Everyone seemed to get stripped down to their core, to the things that really mattered to them. Those that could meet the challenge did, and those that couldn’t, well, at least they didn’t have to live long in this mad new world.

Damn, if there was one thing he could look forward to about Anchorage, besides a solid zombie-proof fence, a real shower, and a good, hot meal, it was the prospect of a proper bed. The idea of not sleeping on pine needles or up in trees or on a living room floor, because only fools with a death wish would get caught upstairs in a house, seemed like a dream to him.

He’d like to do plenty in that bed that didn’t involve sleeping as well. Even for those that had actually gotten busy with it, like Katniss and Peeta, on the run meant anything in the way of sex was a furtive thing, a quickie stolen out in the woods or on a supply run, or trying to be as quiet as possible while everyone else was asleep. For him, well, condoms seemed to be one thing that flew off the shelves quickly, because when they were raiding an abandoned store, those were always something that seemed to be gone along with food, matches, weapons, and ammo. Guess a lot of people wanted to go out with a bang if it was truly the end of the world.

Besides, they’d both hesitated so long in that three years into the plague, even what ones there were left on the shelf had expired. So with them it was more like constant foreplay than sex. He loved her and he ached like hell to actually make love with her, but he wouldn’t take the chance of knocking her up while they were still out in the wild and needed to move fast and quiet—a pregnant woman or a newborn wouldn’t help that cause. 

The idea of having the time to actually get naked, to take as much leisure as he pleased in touching and being touched, in being as loud as they wanted—all that and a clean, comfortable mattress too? Sounded like heaven to him. They’d never had that yet.

They struggled constantly now for supplies, survival, for the long-term plan, but compared to when his life had been easy and secure, he was more at peace with himself. He tried to not wonder what it would have been like if they’d met in that before-world, if he’d actually had the balls to ask her on a date. He liked to think the two of them would have still hit it off. If there was plenty about the epidemic he hated and grieved, he couldn’t regret Johanna. Responsibility to them all kept him going in general, but she kept his heart and soul going when he thought he couldn’t bear one more day of it, when he believed he’d fail them all. 

So he reached over and smoothed the hair back from her brow, and kissed it. It wasn’t a fortunate world, but he was a lucky man all the same. “No walkers out there. Let’s get some sleep,” he agreed.


	57. Haymitch+Peeta, "throw up" (for Chi-studios)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> EMT Derbyverse.

Gin and Lizzie both arrived ten minutes before the scrimmage started smelling of smoke, and Peeta was pretty sure he saw a smudge of soot on Lizzie’s cheek underneath her right eye. “Going for the football stripes now that you’re a zebra?” he quipped to her, gesturing with a fingertip and tracing the streak on his own face.

“Meh, why the hell not,” she said, swiping at her face with her fingertips, sticking her tongue out at him, but utterly intent on throwing her gear on in a hurry. When Peeta looked closer, a few of Gin’s black curls looked a bit singed as well.

He squinted and couldn’t resist asking, “Uh, did you two have to come right from a call?” That had happened more than once. The life of firefighters, he supposed—Gin had wryly remarked more than once it was ninety percent waiting, ten percent adrenaline and insanity.

“Nope,” Gin said, ends of his skate laces in his hands as he tightened them down with a few steady motions, not even looking up at Peeta. “My neighbors’ dumbass son is keeping house for them while they’re away, and apparently,” he deadpanned, “kid thinks everything should be flambé, the kitchen included.”

Good thing a firefighter lived next door, and his firefighter girlfriend was often there as well. But yeah, that would be a problem. When he’d started at the bakery, the ovens had been both a health and fire hazard thanks to the crappy management and a lazy head baker. He still didn’t want to think about all the shit he’d scraped out of them on his first day. Lizzie gave a snort of amusement as she slipped her whistle on over her head. “I’m pretty sure he was all ready to make some fantastic brownies there, Gin,” she said with a smirk. “No wonder he lit the kitchen on fire.”

Peeta didn’t quite get the joke, but Gin let out a sarcastic bark of laughter at that, shaking his head and chuckling to himself. 

Barry grinned at it too, then he looked over at Peeta and the grin grew even wider. “Oh, Slam, my sweet summer child, you never made _special_ brownies? The kind that give you epic munchies?” 

Now the penny finally dropped and he got it. No, he hadn’t ever baked them or eaten them, because frankly he’d been too busy working his way through school to fuck around with things like pot. Not like he had a girlfriend who was into that either. Katniss had worked as hard as he had to make her way through life. Meant she always appreciated what she had, and she strove hard for it. He tried to not resent Barry and others he knew for their certainty and comfort that came from never living hardscrabble, never stretching a hundred bucks to the breaking point, but sometimes in his head it was hard to not want to be an asshole about that sort of unconscious privilege. Gin was good about that. He never spoke about his upbringing much, but no hard task with Google to find out that most West Virginia folks weren’t exactly on top of the income pyramid, and that Haymitch’s hometown was pretty much dirt poor. He understood a way to give Peeta a helping hand here and there without making it a big deal, and without making it charity that wounded a man’s pride too much. For that, Peeta was grateful, even if Gin could be a bit of a grumbly, sarcastic dick sometimes in a half-assed attempt to cover the fact that he cared. 

He was sure Barry had eaten his share of special brownies. Barry had gotten kicked out of his ritzy prep school at fourteen. Eventually got sent to live with his grandma and eventually turned his life around, more power to him, but he’d had some wild, messed-up years by the sound of it. “Remind me to put gum in your helmet, Barry,” he said, smiling over at the older man. A smile went a long way to defusing people’s reactions. Mom and her epic backhand had taught him oh so much about how to smile and lie. They might all be a bunch of misfits on this officiating crew, but as the youngest, he felt a half-step behind the rest, and they teased him about it still.

Barry laughed at that, good-humored as ever, as Gin and Lizzie headed for the rink floor. None of the skaters were watching, but Peeta saw how she nudged Gin with her hip, and the faint smile he gave her and the quick brush of his hand against hers. Since those two had gotten engaged at Valentine’s, and Lizzie transferred to the ref crew, both of them seemed more relaxed.

“For those two,” Barry said jokingly, “that’s about the equivalent of anyone else dry humping in a bar in terms of PDA.”

“Barry, given you and Mayhem getting all handsy at the last afterparty, I really did not need that image,” Peeta groaned, reaching for his mouthguard. “Don’t make me throw up.”

Barry snorted, adjusting the chin strap of his helmet. “Well, vomit away. But you’re still invited to the wedding, and Annie and I would love to hire you to make the cake.” With that news-bomb dropped and that winning Hollywood-star smile of his, he headed onto the rink.


	58. Haymitch/Johanna, admiring knees (for Shelbycominroundthemtn)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> EMT Derbyverse

They’d gone north for the Sirens to play Graphite City, and she’d watched from the outside of the track as an absolute clusterfuck happened on the inside—Mockingslay made an impulsive move to the inside, a heap of skaters went down, and Graphite City’s head ref, Colonel Slanders, jumped back to avoid them, colliding right into Haymitch skating as the jam ref following Slay. He got up slowly in a way that made her stomach lurch.

He finished the game, but she could see as he took off his gear that he was hurting, sitting there hunched over for a moment, elbows braced on his thighs, head down. Slanders came by and patted him in the shoulder. “You all right, Gin?” he asked. Fiftyish, silver-haired, he skated and officiated with a crisp precision like performing a military drill. Barked penalties like they were orders, but the Granite City girls loved him. Apparently Slanders was a retired Army man, now come back to manage his family’s dairy farm—impeccably disciplined cows, Johanna was sure.

“Fine,” Haymitch said, waving a hand dismissively. He raised his head and grinned, though she’d seen enough of his casual smirks to see it was more like gritted teeth disguised as a smile. “Not the first time Mockingslay’s been a bit of a pain,” he quipped. “Usually it’s her mouth, not her skates.” Yeah, even now, Katniss never seemed to be able to shut up and skate to the box without protesting and getting an insubordination tacked on for her troubles. It always pissed Johanna off, both then as a player and now as a ref, that the Sirens seemed to think she was all that and above the rules, so even if she couldn’t keep her mouth shut and it cost the team with her fouling out in the end, it was OK because she was _Mockingslay_ , the One True Jammer.

Not fair, though—at least today. It hadn’t been deliberate on Slay’s part, although might have been nice if she’d bothered to check on Haymitch after the game. “I’ll drive home,” she said. Haymitch tossed her the keys without protest. That said plenty. Usually he complained about her driving. The fact that he accepted an ice pack from the EMTs, he spent most of the hour drive back home silent, and there was a distinct stiffness in his walk, didn’t reassure her either.

“Get your jeans off right now,” she told him after they got in the door.

“Ah, words to warm a guy’s heart,” he wisecracked, but seeing that she was giving him an utter bitchface, he sighed. Kicking off his sneakers and unzipping the jeans, shoving the worn denim down his hips and stepping out of them, he sat down on the couch, presenting his leg for examination like a good patient.

She whistled appreciatively at the sight his thigh right above the knee, a tapestry of purple and red where the bruise still formed. “Holy shit, is that from Slay’s wheel?” She pointed to a round void in the middle of the angry, dark mass, careful to not touch it. But she was relieved. It looked terrible, but chances were it was just a nasty bruise. She’d had concerns Slay had actually hit him in the joint of his knee, or he’d twisted it when he’d fallen. The ugliest looking bruises usually were less severe than the unseen injuries, or the ones that didn’t look so bad.

“And here I thought if Slay was ever gonna kick me, she’d aim a good foot higher,” he deadpanned.

She patted his good left leg on his boxers-clad thigh. “Lucky she didn’t,” she said with a grin. “Means if it doesn’t hurt you too much, I’ll do my best to distract you tonight.”

That perked up his interest, which meant he couldn’t be that badly injured. “Hurts like hell, but I’m pretty sure it’s just a bruise. We’ll check it again tomorrow.” 

“Want to put a picture of it online for everyone to admire?” she offered. “That’s a nice-looking knee. And refs don’t get to enter the bruise contests nearly as often.” 

He snorted and rolled his eyes extravagantly at that idea. He pushed up from the couch, testing the knee and finding it could bear his weight. She grinned at the sight of him in his faded black Queen t-shirt and boxers with “bite me” and vampire smileys. “Shower first, and we can order in pizza?” he suggested.

She tugged her t-shirt up over her head, gratified at the thought of getting her sweat-damp bra and underwear off and scrubbing clean. Her wrists still smelled like wristguard funk. “Good plan. I’m starving.”


	59. Hayhanna, first kiss (for Anon)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hurricane'verse

The bonfire in the square provided more than enough light and warmth against the chilly winter night, and it satisfied everyone in Seven to be able to burn as much firewood as they wanted, rations be damned as they tasted that first small piece of defiant freedom. Throwing the stocks and the execution block in was deeply satisfying as well. 

They shoveled the snow out of the square again, and it didn’t matter that they were wearing their heavy, clumsy winter boots. Joy made everyone’s feet as light as if they were barefoot out at the lumber camps in high summer. 

Johanna danced that night until she was dizzy, the winter stars seeming to whirl above her as she threw her head back and laughed, happy like she hadn’t been since she was a kid. She hadn’t even had any of the spruce beer on offer, declining it because drinking it in front of Haymitch would feel like an open taunt.

Finally even her energy started to wind down, though. It had been long weeks—long months. “All right, it’s cold and it’s late, let’s get to bed,” Haymitch grumbled, but she could see that even he was smiling. 

She grinned at him playfully as they walked back towards Victors’ Glade. “What, you wanna keep me warm tonight, honey?”

He stopped and looked at her, eyebrows rising sharply. She leaned back against the wall of Sawyer Brown’s bakery, willing herself to simply wait—if she’d learned anything in months of being around the man, getting closer to him, it was that he weighed his heavy decisions before making them, and that making light of this wouldn’t be the brightest idea. 

Still, to hold her tongue and do nothing, after having put the invitation out there, frayed at her nerves. He might say no—again. Her cheeks suddenly felt hot, and it wasn’t only the nip of frost in the air. She’d thrown it out there as casual joking, but it surprised her to find that she’d actually meant it. The giddy whirl stopped and everything crashed to a sudden stillness, both of them standing there as if frozen. It surprised her that her heart kept beating, her chest kept rising and falling, and that she could see the icy mist of his breath and hers in the air. “Well?” she whispered the word.

He kept watching her, the usual stamp of wry amusement or even exasperation fading from his features. He looked softer somehow, but it wasn’t the gentleness she saw in him with Posy and Lindy, or even the patient affection he had with Vick. He looked almost uncertain, oddly and painfully vulnerable for it. 

He reached up, and tugged off his gloves. At the touch of his bare fingers on her cheek, he watched her again, a bit of heat in his eyes, yes, but something else she didn’t know how to read yet. The tenderness in that small bit of contact and the way he looked at her chipped away at her defenses. There was more demand in that small touch and that inquisitive gaze than if he’d pinned her against the wall, kissed her hotly, and started yanking at the buttons of her coat. That would have been just sex. She could do sex. What he asked for now—that was him wanting to be let into far more than simply her body.

She shook her head, angry now with him for putting her on the defensive like that, feeling him threaten her walls simply by being there, and by asking, far more than any outright attack could. If he’d pushed her for a fuck, she would have the power then, power to either drag him off to bed or laugh in his face. But if she let him in, opened a small crack in her armor, would the day come where she’d find out that in her distraction it had fallen away entirely? “Can’t you just fuck me and let yourself enjoy it rather than overthinking it?” she demanded irritably.

“No, I can’t,” he said, and she mourned the loss as an impatient sharpness entered his expression again, and he drew his hand back as if he’d been burned. “Really? Jumping right to fucking me is the only way you think this can go? Both of us hoping we can get through it without freaking out and shutting down, and we keep going only ‘cause we were trained to endure it to the end, or else? Only going through the motions?” Literally, she heard him add under his breath, and she would have smiled at that bit of familiar sarcasm if this hadn’t mattered so much.

She looked away, able too easily to see exactly what he’d meant. “So what you’re saying,” she tried her best to recover some of her usual flippancy, “is that you respect me too much to fuck me tonight. Best excuse I’ve heard, I’ll give you that.”

The gentle touch of his fingers at her jaw urged her to turn back towards him. But stronger than her as he was, he didn’t force her—simply a momentary press to ask, and then he eased off. She looked, and the way he was looking at her almost hurt, everything he was offering to her with that look, and how much it must have cost him to open himself up for it. “Maybe I love you too much for that,” and the aching earnestness in that voice, shorn of all its flippancy or snarkiness, hurt too. But it was a good kind of a pain, like the healthy tingle of slowly warming up after being out in the cold for far too long. His Twelve accent was thick as winter honey as he said the words, and that told her as much as his tone how deeply he felt it.

Damn him. Like that, he slipped inside her defenses as if they were as insubstantial as clouds, because she couldn’t answer that with a grin and glib words. Not from him. “What do you want, then?”

But even as she said it, the answer was right there in her mind, deep and certain. As much as she feared being rejected by him again, obviously he was afraid of being nothing to her again but a body she took for granted, to use and then discard. Maybe he was right. Maybe it would be better to wait, to try and work through it. She couldn’t imagine yet what it might be like to take him to bed and not be at least a little afraid of how much it would mean, and all the ways she could fail. Because he was too close already for her it to be so casual, purely physical. She wanted him more than she wanted a fuck. 

He was no impatient, desperate boy. Life had given him hard perspective, and for him to want her enough to put aside his self-preservation and his fear, told her plenty. He would try his best to help her deal with her demons, and he’d do it with patience, because obviously he was in this for the long term. If he opened his heart even that much, declared it so plainly, he wasn’t looking for the “wait and see” of a girlfriend. He’d made his choice already, wanted her for his wife. To find out that unlike Finnick she wasn’t alone, and unlike Rhus he could speak up before it was too late—finally this was the right man at the right time, and what a difference that made.

No telling if they could withstand it in the end. But she’d never been a coward. She wouldn’t start now. Peeling off her own gloves, she reached down and took his hands in hers, feeling her fingers start to warm his slightly chilly ones. 

It felt a little funny, standing there holding hands with him like two kids on the way back from a moonlit walk through the winter town, like they were stealing the last moments together before he’d walk her back to her parents’ house, and being certain that his hands would stay right there rather than straying to grope or unbutton clothes or push her up against the wall. She’d never had moments like this, leisurely and sweet, an intrinsic reward rather than the first fleeting step towards a pressure of getting naked. She would have been too innocent to appreciate them then. But being a woman now who’d seen it all, rather than a girl moving slowly from ignorance, shyness, and the barrier of reaping-risk, she could appreciate them all the more.

“So maybe I love you enough to wait until we figure it out,” she told him. The look on his face, a fleeting but astonished pleasure he didn’t bother to hide, was the sweetest kind of bliss. “This will change everything, you know.” They couldn’t ever go back to how it had been before this moment, to being only friends, trusting each other but still defensive of their mutual separateness. If they went on and it fell apart, it would hurt like hell.

“I know.” She should have figured. For him to be this certain, Haymitch probably would have anguished over every facet of it for weeks already. “We’re both a real mess when it comes to this shit, you know.”

“I know.” She heard the question there, loud and clear—yes, she still wanted him anyway, and she’d stick around for however long it took.

Keeping his hands in hers, lurching ahead into the unknown, she stretched up on tiptoe and she kissed him before he would feel obliged to make the first move. It wasn’t easy, trying her best to keep her instincts from panicking and instinctively turning it into something purely sexual to hide behind. Not a terrified virgin needing him to do everything, not a selfish girl treating him like her toy and ignoring what he wanted—trying to prove to him once and for all that things had changed. Trying to kiss him as her equal, and put all her heart and mind into it, and all the slowly growing things she couldn’t simply find a way to say to him these past months. A steady warmth that was softer but deeper than lust, asking rather than demanding—this was a different kind of hunger she had for him, one that wouldn’t burn itself out after an orgasm or two. 

She must have gotten it right, because there was only a moment’s pause before he kissed her back, steady and certain. He might have gotten a little rusty at romance since sixteen, and he’d changed more than enough in that time. But obviously he hadn’t forgotten how to kiss a woman he loved, because this was nothing like that afternoon years ago, his kisses skilled but devoid of anything of the man. 

She was glad she hadn’t had that spruce beer. He would have tasted it on her lips now, and this was more intoxicating than a mug of even Rolf’s finest could be. 

So this was what she’d been missing. Shit. If a simple kiss could be like this, getting him in bed would be well worth the wait.


	60. Delly+Johanna+Peeta+Haymitch+Katniss, Halloween (for Chistudios)

Delly would never deny she’d been luckier than Peeta. Not that being the sole survivor of that car wreck was a piece of luck, but at least she had memories of her father’s touch on her cheek as he tucked her in, her mother’s smiles. Doug and Catey Cartwright had been good parents. Only children, though, and with their parents all dead, so it meant once she got out of the hospital, she was a ten-year-old girl in the Pennsylvania foster care system, and struggling with physical therapy for the next two years, she wasn’t all that great an adoption prospect.

But at least they’d loved her. The courts sent Peeta to the home when he was twelve too, with a cast on his arm from a broken arm, courtesy of his mom’s abusive rages and a father who wouldn’t bother to stop her. He barely talked to anyone for a month. Too old to be adopted, they’d stayed there until they were eighteen.

At least she knew that she had one person in the world who was hers, and even if he hadn’t been born to it, Peeta was her brother now. She’d defended him against the bullies in high school, and they’d shared an apartment as she went to college and he went to culinary school, and Lord knew there were enough hazards for a girl at college.

She’d moved to take the job and he’d come with her because there was a bakery needing a baker. That was Peeta. She wouldn’t say that he didn’t have ambitions, but he hid so much of himself—his baking talent, his art, his uncertainties. All those years of his parents telling him that he was worthless had stuck to him.

Then he came home and told her he was becoming a roller derby ref and heck, she’d seen “Whip It” but it was so out of character for him. She’d gone and seen how he looked at a dark-haired girl and understood, and sighed. He was so sweet with her kindergartners when he brought them cookies. But he’d always been so shy with girls, noticing them but afraid to make a move—she was well aware she was safe to him because he could never see her that way—and here he was throwing himself into all this just hoping to catch this Katniss girl’s attention.

So like a good sister ought, she walked into the hot rink, dressed in shorts and two sports bras and a ratty old wrestling t-shirt of Peeta’s from high school, and found that she introduced herself to a woman called Little Mermayhem. “I’d like to join the team, please. I’m Delly, I’m Peeta’s sister.”

“Peeta?” the woman said, pausing in pulling her long dark hair back into a ponytail.

Another woman, shorter and solid and with short spiky brown hair, grinned and elbowed her. “She means Slam, Mayhem,” she said. “AKA ‘Gin’s new chewtoy.’” She nodded down towards the end of the rink where Delly saw Peeta flailing his way across the floor as a dark-haired man followed him, at ease on his skates and obviously providing commentary. “Hey, I’m Johanna.” She stuck out a hand. “You’ll get to be in my freshmeat group, along with Wondergirl Katniss.”

“Johanna, c’mon,” Mayhem said. “Well, Delly, let’s see what you’ve got.”

She loved it. Oh, others loved the ability to take out frustrations and deal out a solid hit, and they cheered as Delly—eventually, Dellicious—gave out surprisingly solid blocks and hits. But she loved coming together and working as a team, each of them figuring out what they added to the equation, being strong and capable and supportive of each other. 

Dealing with a classroom of little kids each day and trying to teach them that kind of life lesson, she appreciated all the more that she could find it here. She could even admit, after Peeta quietly pointed it out, that it was good for her too. Little kids were easy, at least in terms of social demands. She’d always been the fat kid and she’d gotten used to quiet distance at best, and outright mocking at worst. She’d learned, like Peeta, to greet it with a smile and disarm it with kindness. She loved little kids. They had their tantrums and their trials, but there was a purity to them, before life got so complicated and nasty when they got more self-aware. She wished everything could be solved by naps and a new box of crayons and maybe the occasional time-out or lesson about sharing. Her students didn’t test her as equals, didn’t understand enough or get close enough to ask uncomfortable questions or say uncomfortable things. Maybe she’d been avoiding things herself and focusing on Peeta instead to ignore it.

Soon after she and Johanna and Katniss graduated to the Sirens, the league held a Halloween skate party for the local kids, complete with candy and cobwebs and cheesy scary music. Almost all of her class came to see “Miss Delly” there and to load up on candy, and she grabbed their hands and taught them to skate beyond the first tentative shuffles. Peeta was in high demand as a face painter for skaters and kids alike, no two creations the same. A fantastical assortment of zombies and ghouls and skeletons and superheroes and princesses and butterflies went around the rink, kid and adults alike giddy with candy and adrenaline.

She watched Gin, well in his dual role of EMT and head ref, watching it all with a practiced eye and circling the rink with the watchful eye of a hawk as the kids swooped and dashed around, though even he’d gotten tongue-in-cheek by letting Peeta paint zebra stripes in his face.

Peeta skidded to a stop in front of her as she let Naomi go off with her mom, and his teeth flashed white against his Spiderman face paint. “He looks like he wants to call penalties on little kids,” she said teasingly, pointing to Gin.

“It’s Gin, Dells,” Peeta said. “Paramedic, head ref—he doesn’t ever really turn off the whole ‘worrying about people’s safety’ switch, I think.” She could sympathize with Gin on that. When it came to Peeta, her own switch was always on. He’d been hurt so damn much already. She respected Gin’s need for distance on some things, even as she wanted to just give the man a hug some days because he looked like he needed it.

Lizzie caught Gin around the waist, using it as a whip and turning around in front of him, and from the look on her face, she teased him too. “Well, maybe he can turn it off around one person,” Delly replied. She had the feeling Lizzie was the rare person Gin felt didn’t need his concern, from what her freshmeat mate had said to her about him and working the ambulance together. Maybe that was part of why Gin loved her, even if he hadn’t admitted it yet—simply because Lizzie didn’t need him to take care of her and she could be his equal. She looked over at Peeta. “We all just want someone like that, don’t we? Someone we can turn the switch off when they’re around.”

She wasn’t surprised when Peeta’s eyes went to Mockingslay, currently refilling the candy bowl for about the tenth time. She and Katniss had never really gotten close during freshmeat the way she had with Johanna. There was a wall around Katniss that Delly couldn’t quite figure out, and even if she could admire the other woman’s derby skills, she couldn’t help her disappointment at feeling like Katniss was one of the rare ones who’d never really joined the team itself as part of the whole. Well, maybe someday. 

Peeta’s cookies and cupcakes disappeared at an alarming rate as well, and they were good enough that the kids were willing to leave the skating floor to get them. One reason it was so hard for her to lose weight, even with all the derby practice—living with a brother who baked constantly.

She’d found something of her own here at derby, far more than simply watching over Peeta. But she’d watched Peeta too, saw him learning and growing, and maybe he’d come here for the girl who became a superstar alarmingly fast, but he found other things too. He’d blossomed, found friends, found a new confidence that made him hold his head high rather than having that instinctive apology whenever he got challenged. Gin in particular seemed to have taken a shine to him as a mentor and then as a friend—the head ref was probably a dozen years older than Peeta at least, but there was some kind of unspoken understanding there between them, and a deep friendship that sprang from it. Peeta never talked much about whatever that was, but Delly never asked. She’d seen in the foster home that secrets were sometimes the only thing of value a person got to keep.

“I stashed three bags of candy at home,” she said. “A whole bag of Snickers.” Peeta’s favorite.

“I made caramel apples,” he said, grinning at her. They’d never been allowed candy in the home, so every Halloween they’d binge on candy and watch Rocky Horror. “So, are you going to introduce me to this year’s tiny terrors?” He nodded to the kindergartners rolling around the center of the rink as Barry and Gin pretended to be monsters chasing them.

Whatever happened with Katniss in the future, at least Peeta’s crush on her had led him here, and that had led her here too. They’d both gained things, both inside themselves and in the people they’d met and befriended, by being here. So Delly was thankful for that much.


	61. Haymitch, 10 year Games anniversary pictures (for Chistudios)

The Capitol had done its job well with Four in keeping the central third within their grasp, driving a wedge between the east and west and keeping them divided and isolated. As Annie explained it, Johanna had the idea that particular third had always been more blatantly Capitol-favored, more Capitol-dependent for industry, and thus more fiercely Capitol-loyal. Finnick had come from that region, long ago, a little place called Crooked Bayou, and apparently Annie had grown up right near Victors’ Bayou herself.

Between the liberated parts of Four to the east and west, gradually they’d whittled the Capitol’s stranglehold down. Not an easy task, though, and every town seemed bought in lives. The ones who’d gained the most under the Capitol feared most to lose it, so they fought tooth and nail to keep what they had rather than risk the chance of something much bigger in claiming their freedom.

The final fight for Blacktide Bay was bloody as anything and Johanna wouldn’t easily forget the sight of the hummocks of bodies lying at the water’s edge, delicate curls and plumes of blood flowing into the water and then being swept up by the waves, becoming a reddish current that washed up against the shore.

There was little celebration that night. Victors’ Bayou still lay ahead and that might well be an even worse battle. Treating the wounded lasted until late in the evening. She and Haymitch cleaned their gear, and trudging tiredly out into the town, found a place to stay—no shortage of abandoned houses to commandeer, so she had no intention of sleeping on the ground tonight. They found a house that had been a small cozy guesthouse for Capitolites looking to tour—the boom business was at Victors’ Bayou with the beaches nearby, but even here a Capitolite could come tour and make a Four fisherman take them out on a charter run. She wondered how those captains had avoided having their eyes roll permanently back in their head. At least she’d only had to deal with Capitolites a month of the year.

She and Haymitch ate syrupy canned fruit and jerky on the porch, and she lectured him to check the bandages on his arm again. “Yes, darlin’,” he said with a raised eyebrow, reaching over to spear another slice of peach with his fork. She listened, grateful to not hear the sounds of broken glass or smashed furniture from other houses borrowed for the night—she’d done her best to put a stop to that shit quickly. Frustrations were one thing, but better ways to harness that energy in actually fighting the Capitol, rather than just breaking their shit. Besides, she saw no point freely giving the Capitol ammunition to paint them as simple thugs and brigands.

In the small front room, Haymitch pulled out the datapad and propped it up on the table, among the clutter of books, coasters, and the like. There was a checkers set, missing two of the red pieces, replaced instead with metallic red fishing lures lacking the hook. He pulled up the map, projecting it onto the wall in clear definition.

She eyed the map as he did, trying to formulate the plan in her mind. He’d never mark it physically, not for positions of their soldiers, or with any kind of actual strategic plan. If we get captured and I can’t destroy the datapad I’m fucked, but better to not fuck everyone else by giving away the game, he’d said idly. Damn man could stare at it, maybe now and again mutter and trace things with his finger and then announce something fully formed like he’d created the entire picture vividly in his mind.

“We have Port Cypress yet, or is that next?” she asked, pointing at a dot between Blacktide Bay and Victors’ Bayou.

“Nah, Renleigh’s group took it three days ago, we’re good,” he said idly, fist underneath his chin as he stared at the map intensely.

Well, forget it. That whole mess of towns and terrain and strategy wasn’t her best game. It was his, and best let him handle it and then let her chime in and help with the details of the actual attack plan—she always did better on the things with immediacy. “Let me know when you’re ready to spout some wisdom,” she said dryly, reaching for the stack of books, leaning back against the couch. The plush rug felt good to sit on, she’d freely admit that.

Impressively large and weighty books with glossy covers, the sort they produced in Seven’s printing houses—known as “coffee table” books, her friend Rhus told her, since he worked in the bindery during the winter months. Given nobody in Seven had a table exclusively for coffee, and frequently they didn’t even have coffee anyway and the adults boiled the shit out of week-old grounds to produce something that looked like weak tea, the two of them had laughed about that.

Thumbing through the first one, it was a survey of the industries of Panem. She let out a snort of amusement at the carefully staged shots of Seven lumberjacks, in absurdly tidy clothes all the way to wearing jackets that had never seen a rip or a smudge of sap or dirt—shit, come the worst heat of August, the men and little kids worked shirtless and the women stripped down to their bras, kerchiefs knotted around their brows a bit salt-stiff from being air-dried overnight, and everyone drank water by the gallon. She wasn’t sure whether the average Capitolite would find that display of flesh savage or titillating.

Another book about a century of Capitol fashion trends—nothing at all about the Eight weavers or the One embroiderers and furriers and the like, or the tanners of Ten. Wouldn’t do for anyone out there to get too much truth and put it together. The Capitol worked best when it kept everyone ignorant and divided, including its own to some degree. She noted with some amusement that ruffled or puffy sleeves apparently came back in every fifteen years or so, for both men and women.

The third book—she opened it to the middle, and immediately the familiarity of the face hit her. Chantilly Dumas, but younger—mid-twenties, perhaps, turned away from the camera, an embroidered sky-blue silk robe slipping from her shoulder to show flawless maple-sugar skin and a butterfly tattoo, teak-brown hair drawn aside and draped over her left shoulder. Chantilly looked back at the camera over her right shoulder a slight coy curl to one side of that oh-so-sweet smile above bedroom eyes.

The photographer knew their stuff full well—the power of erotic suggestion, rather than blatant nudity. Johanna had been so young for most of Chantilly’s years of popularity—Cashmere replaced her when Johanna was thirteen and by then Chantilly was past her Capitol peak anyway—but vaguely she recalled that image of innocence and sweetness, married to One’s seductiveness. She’d been expected to play the role of the virgin and whore all rolled into one, and the photographer captured that image perfectly.

She instinctively turned the page, but that didn’t help. 49th Games turning to 50th—this face was even more familiar. Haymitch, lounging carelessly by the side of a pool, legs dangling in the water. Olive skin shining in the sunlight with a cascade of water droplets, curly hair dripping wet, obviously he’d just finished taking a dip in the pool. The waistband of those wet, clinging black swim shorts sunk just a little too low on his hips, and he smirked knowingly at the photographer, eyes intent and one eyebrow cocked, as if daring them to do something about it. If Chantilly had been demurely inviting, this was pure arrogant challenge.

She must have unknowingly made some noise at the sight, because suddenly he was there, leaning on by her shoulder. She saw his face in that moment as she looked up, but he recovered quickly, saying flippantly, “Well, at least you didn’t find that upstairs in one of the bedrooms with the pages all sticky.” He gave her a smirk too to punctuate it, but it looked like a façade to her.

“What is this anyway?” she asked.

“Oh, the popular victors back in the day always got a ten year anniversary photo shoot for the Capitol to marvel at images of us victorious little boys and girls all grown up into men and women—while we were still young enough to be good-looking,” he said dryly. “Lapilus Bluestem’s little pet project. He’s been retired a good ten years now, so I’m afraid any victor whose Games came after 54 missed out.” He shrugged. “There were some ‘behind-the-scenes’ type pictures too for mentoring, but the sexy pictures in particular, nice way for your average Capitol citizen without the money to buy a fuck from a victor to get a chance to drool over seeing some skin without needing to resort to anything as tawdry as a pay-to-view. Spent something like seven hours getting in and out of that damn pool over and over, worrying those swim shorts were gonna fall off. Now, if you don’t mind,” an exaggerated motion towards the map, “I’m thinking more about the immediate future and not getting our asses killed in the next battle, rather than rehashing ancient history.”

She watched as he turned back to the map, too deliberately nonchalant. It took her a moment, but she realized she’d seen the flush creeping its way into his cheek as he turned away from her.

Embarrassment—no, more than that, with awkwardness in the lines of his body, a coiled tension he looked like he was braced ready for a physical blow. Not embarrassment, but sheer humiliation. The photos were tasteful, subtle—art, if she was any judge. But they immortalized him as the role he’d been forced to play, produced in a book that anyone from the Capitol or the wealthier districts could have afforded, splashed all over the printing presses for the Seven workers to see. At least the details of what happened to them in Capitol bedrooms stayed secret. She called to mind the image of how, even drunk and disheveled and frequently kicking his shoes off at the slightest excuse around other victors, he always stayed covered if any Capitolite was around—sleeves to the wrist, long trousers, shirt buttoned. Seeing that picture with so much skin so casually on display was startling, and maybe even more so for him.

But was the old shame the only thing at work? It felt like it had cut him strangely deeply, for all that the prostitution was no secret and she’d seen him deal with people asking about it. Then it struck her. Ancient history. When we were still young enough to be good-looking.

True, the Capitol had lost interest in her, but she’d made it happen early, and done it more or less on her terms. He’d played by all their rules to protect people, been the obedient whore for so many years until finally, he grew too old and too drunk and too overweight and too cynical, and they stopped buying. The Capitol patrons, and his own people in Twelve besides, all looking at him in disgust and telling him he was now worth nothing.

Did he actually mourn the loss of those years of Capitol buyers and Capitol attention, some kind of fucked-up nostalgia? It wasn’t the buyers he missed. It couldn’t be. He wasn’t that screwed up as to want the love of those who’d hurt him so badly.

He’d looked at himself in that picture. And he’d cringed. Not because he’d been a whore, and not because of the loss of the attention. She had the sense he looked at himself now, and looked at the man that picture represented, particularly with her right there the age he’d been when that picture was taken—a young man so utterly confident in his body and his sex appeal. He could never be that man, never be so young again, never be so thin and toned and with skin so flawless. A twenty-six year old man could pull off that photo with the sheer panache of youth. At forty-one, it would look like trying to desperately cling to the past. Ancient history. He dwelled on the ghost of so many years stolen from him, years where most men enjoyed their raw youthful sexuality and instead for him all the years of his young manhood and beyond had all been a lie that left him damaged, closed off, admitting to her with such a painful embarrassment that he wasn’t sure whether he’d ever be able feel anything like that ever again, or if he’d buried it away too deep.

She grieved for him in that moment, with a swell of emotion that made her panic for a moment. He wouldn’t want pity. But it wasn’t pity, was it? This wasn’t weakness. She wanted to comfort him, wanted to lash out at the people who’d hurt him, wanted…

She hadn’t really let herself think about him at all, after how decisively he’d shut her down all those years ago, and how they’d both agreed to keep sex out of it for the time being. But now she couldn’t help but crack that door a little bit, and really look at him. There you are. 

She looked at him, and it was as if some lens had tilted ever so slightly, and now suddenly there he was in a way he hadn’t been before. Yes, he was more careworn, lines etched in his face that would never go away. The first threads of grey had appeared in that black hair of his. He was more solid than the litheness he’d own back then, and she suspected no matter what he did, short of starving himself, he’d never get rid of those few pounds that clung to his waist, softening it ever so slightly. The dark hair the Capitol had so religiously stripped off him was there on his forearms beneath his rolled-up sleeves, and showing slightly through the vee of his partly-unbuttoned shirt—damn, she hadn’t even realized how he’d relaxed around her enough to do that, had she?

He’d never had an ethereal boyish beauty—it had always been his attitude that kept the buyers with him, even past thirty. But his looks had aged well, and maybe he wasn’t young, but he was pleasant-looking still, particularly now with the lively animation of purpose rather than the sluggishness of abandoning all hope as he’d done for so many of the years she’d known him. 

She suddenly wondered what he’d look like giving her that invitation into his bed. Not that smirk that he’d polished and practiced until it became his mask for everything. What he’d look like imbued with that sheer confidence about himself and about sex—shit, she couldn’t even imagine exactly how he’d look, but the very idea of it roused her anyway, and suddenly she ached for him, in an unfamiliar way that had nothing to do with the old desires for power or reassurance. She didn’t want to get him naked right then and there, so the old fear that made her hang back had apparently been exorcized. This was something different, and more. He wasn’t merely a convenient frame for her to hang her own needs upon, as he’d been all those years ago, as Finnick had been, as Rye and Spark had been, as all those Capitol assholes in clubs had been.

She’d seen him in a towel in their bathroom in the flurry before getting the kids ready, for fuck’s sake, so the sight of his body wasn’t much of a mystery to her. She didn’t want the man in that Bluestem picture, didn’t even want the man he’d been seven years later when she slept with him in a desperate panic, still with traces of that youthful grace and leanness. She wanted the man sitting there, the man of forty-one who’d stayed by her side through all of this and supported her and laughed with her and fought with her and bled with her, the man who cared for kids that might not be born of his blood but whom he couldn’t bear to see cast adrift, as both of them had been. The man she loved. She couldn’t deny the truth of that anymore, in the secrecy of her own heart.

He’d fuck her if she asked. He’d made that clear. But she’d made it equally clear he didn’t want a performance out of him, however skilled. She wanted to see him take back that part of himself and see him alight with passion and enjoyment if he ever came to her, seeing her in all her flaws and still loving her enough to want to let her in as close to his body and his heart as she could possibly get. And now, in her heart of hearts, she feared maybe he never could, and she’d never want anyone else the same way. With any other man would just be fucking, and she’d had enough meaningless fucking to not really care if she ever had it again.

Opening that door was probably a mistake, because now she couldn’t close it. But she wouldn’t, couldn’t, force that desire on him. She was well aware what made him tick, and how he’d give in and forget whatever he felt only to make her happy. Sex had to be something he wanted for himself, so she’d have to keep her mouth shut for now. “So, Victors’ Bayou,” she said, forcing herself to turn the topic and focus on something else to clear her mind. And wasn’t that hell, when war actually seemed less fraught with dangers than love?


	62. Annie+Haymitch: Annie in the EMT Derby'verse (for Dorsalfinnick)

Growing up a Texas coast girl, Annie had never experienced a real winter until she ended up taking the scholarship up in Pennsylvania. The snow had quickly lost some of its novelty, but finals were over, their first semester was done, and she’d caught a ride with her friend Shawn at least as far as Baton Rouge, and her parents would pick her up there and bring her back to Galveston for Christmas. 

She’d crammed for her psych exam all night and then hopped right in the car, so the patter of the freezing rain on the windshield and the steady beat of the wipers made a rhythm that lulled her steadily towards sleep, dreaming already of her dad’s sugar cookies.

Then the car lurched, and she heard Shawn’s curse at another driver as he swerved suddenly turn into a yell of panic as the car headed right for the bridge railing. Everything happened so fast and something hit her head, and she blacked out.

When she came to, freezing, she saw that the windshield had shattered, and that the cold rain had soaked her. She wasn’t numb enough to not feel that she’d been cut by the flying shards of glass. But that wasn’t enough to explain how the water ran pink down the parts of her pale blue sweater not soaked scarlet already, or the thick, coppery smell. She looked over towards the driver’s seat and screamed, didn’t look away fast enough to not have the image of Shawn’s nearly-severed head.

Then she screamed again as she felt the car lurch, delicately teetering on the edge of toppling over the bridge where it had crashed through the guardrail. She didn’t dare move to look and see how far she’d fall, or whether she’d hit water or a mountain valley or a busy interstate. Her hand reached for the door handle and yanked it, but nothing happened. “Girl’s conscious!” There came a yell by her side and then she became more aware of the blaze of bright lights behind her. A hand touched her shoulder. “Hey, kid, what’s your name?”

“Annie,” she chattered out, not looking at him, terrified that if she moved at all, the car would plummet over the edge.

“We’ve got the car secured to our rig, Annie. You won’t fall.” The voice wasn’t the familiar accent of home, but the Southern twang was there, comforting all the same. 

“Lou…” Another man’s voice interrupted. “I’ve got the saw.”

“We’re on it, Hawthorne, keep your pants on,” Lou grumbled. “Annie, can you feel your legs?” 

“Yeah.” Though she was pinned in so tightly she couldn’t move them, and her right ankle hurt in an awful, bone-deep way. He laid a thick coat over her, covering her head, but he kept hold of her hand. Wringing it tightly for dear life, grateful for that touch even given his thick leather glove, she heard the screeching buzz sound of a saw chopping through the metal of the door, and he kept talking to her throughout, telling her she’d be all right. 

When they finally cut her free, she couldn’t walk with the shattered ankle, so Lou carried her the little way to where the paramedics waited with the stretcher. Once they’d put her on the stretcher, now she looked at the firefighter who’d stayed by her, not wanting to let go his hand, wanting to thank him. 

A man probably about ten years older than her, dark-haired and grey-eyed—he looked at her and gave her a wry little smile. “You’re a survivor. Don’t let this eat up your life, Annie,” he said quietly. He patted her on the shoulder again with his free hand and then let go. She watched Lou walk away, shrugging his blood-smeared firefighter’s jacket back on as he did so. The bold yellow letters across the back between the two lines of reflective striping spelled “LIEUTENANT” and then on the next line, “ABERNATHY.”

Don’t let this eat up your life. Sure, great. Surgery to put a rod and screws in her ankle to put it back together, and that was the easy part. A few years of counseling and she could actually sleep at night most of the time. But sometimes a loud noise, getting caught in a cold downpour, the screech of brakes, and she was right there back in that car, trapped with a headless Shawn and terrified that she would fall. 

But things moved on as best they could. She got a job teaching English, plus coaching the swim team. It was only cold, dark waters that terrified her, not the serenity of the pool. She found roller derby when the Sirens came together and started a league, and that was the piece she’d been missing—a way to take out the darker, angrier parts of her that tea and yoga and swimming and meditation couldn’t touch, the parts that still wanted to scream, Why me, why am I so fucked up? If sometimes she startled at something, or desperately asked for a ride home on a freezing rainy night, or if she couldn’t be a part of the Halloween zombie skate because of the gruesome bloody makeup, they didn’t judge.

She gave them everything she had every time she laced up the skates, so they accepted her and all her flawed spots. On the track, Little Mermayhem could be the confident badass that a still-struggling Annie Cresta couldn’t. On skates, nothing hurt.

It was at their third game, getting the shit kicked out of them by Granite City, that she saw him again. He stood there with another local EMT, ready in case of injury, arms folded. His partner’s gaze wandered, but he watched the game with a hawklike intensity. Eight years now since she was a college freshman, but she couldn’t forget that face. 

Skating up to him after the game, her skates making him as tall as him in his sneakers, she greeted him as he grabbed his paramedic’s bag. “Hey, Lou.”

He looked at her and she could see recognition immediately on his face. “Well, well. Annie, isn’t it?” Even as he mustered a smile, he looked tired, and unhappy, as if the sheer effort of living had worn him down to the bone. “Good to see you again.”

Seeing that tiredness in him, recognizing it, she blurted, “You want to go get a drink or something?”

A dark eyebrow rose at that. “Kid—“

“I’m twenty-six,” she corrected him sharply.

“Yeah, and I’m thirty-six, so that’s that bit of fun trivia,” he answered, shrugging, slinging the strap of the bag over his chest. “But you were, what, eighteen then?”

“Yeah.”

“Here’s some advice for you. You’re not the first to have an interest in a firefighter who rescued you, especially with as young as you were at the time. But savior complexes make for shitty relationships, and well, me besides…” A low, acerbic chuckle, and he shook his head.

She half wanted to chew him out, but the way he didn’t quite look at her told her he wasn’t just being a deliberate asshole. Well, derby had made her bolder in her words where she had to be, so she just went at it. “I wanted to buy you dinner or something because you helped save my life, Lou. That wasn’t hero worship or an invitation for sex.” 

Now he did smile in a way that looked more genuine. “All right then.” He looked at her with something like interest now, but not a smutty leer. “By the way, it’s Haymitch, not Lou. ‘Lou’ is—was—shorthand at the firehouse for Lieutenant.”

“You’re not a…”

“Oh, I’m runnin’ the ambo now as a paramedic, sweetheart,” he said dryly. “I gave up running into fires a few years back.” She sensed a story there.

He was probably an alcoholic. That much became quickly clear the way he very purposefully knocked back Jack and Coke at the diner like it was water, and she had the sneaking suspicion that he’d have left the Coke off entirely if he wasn’t out in public. Though at least he wasn’t a sloppy drunk, didn’t stare at her breasts in her tank top. True to his word, he wasn’t after sex. She didn’t know what he was after, though, that he’d agreed to come eat with her. She didn’t know why she’d offered so impulsively either, but it hurt to see that someone who’d been there to help her before brought down so low. 

The more he drank, the more a glum pall seemed to descend over him. “It’s good to see you doing well, though,” he said finally.

No point beating around the bush. “Looks like you’re not.”

“Now, what was your first clue?” smirking and jiggling the empty glass in his hand with a clink of ice cubes. She looked and saw no wedding ring on that hand either.

“Sorry,” he said finally, picking at a mozzarella stick and avoiding her eyes again. “I ain’t much fit for anyone’s company, these days.” He mustered another of those half-hearted smiles. 

She had the unnerving sense that it was serving others as a firefighter that had made him crash and burn, and the sense too that he was still struggling to keep it together so he wouldn’t disappoint her somehow. God, did she relate to that feeling. If everyone he served with as a paramedic was aware of his history that had to make it even worse. Best thing to do in that case was find a new social circle to help buffer things a little bit. But it would be weird to keep asking him out to go drinking and watch him sit there, moody and awkward. The only other thing she could offer…she asked impulsively, “So, can you skate by any chance?”

Another of those gruff laughs answered her. “Trying to recruit me for your little smash-up on skates, Little Mermayhem? I don’t think the leggings would look good on me. I’m almost forty, out of shape to boot.”

“Our oldest player’s forty-seven. And no, boys can’t skate with us, but we do need referees. Interested in keeping an eye on us while we play and telling people what to do, help keep it safe and fair?” Somehow she had the sense that could appeal to him. “You think I walked away from that crash without a whole bunch of baggage? I did my share of partying too hard in college to try to get away from it. Booze, weed, sometimes even harder stuff. I woke up in beds I didn’t know with guys and girls that I didn’t remember, or ended up puking in strange bathrooms.” She wasn’t proud of it, but at least being around women who supported rather than judged had taught her that there was a difference between deeply ruing mistakes and being made to feel the hot twisting agony of shame. “I still get episodes, OK? And derby’s pretty much saved me here, in the end. Sounds hokey as hell, I know. But…”

He looked at her directly then, as if suddenly the scars on her soul were somehow visible to him. Hesitated, looked as if he wanted to say something, probably another wry quip, but thought better of it. “What the hell,” he said, mostly to himself with another of those half shrugs. “Might as well entertain you folks.” 

She hesitated, not wanting to nag this man she barely knew, but moved to it anyway. “Tell me you’ll take a taxi home, or do I need to call you one?”

He looked at her and nodded. She scribbled on a napkin and handed it to him. “Here’s my number.”

“Been a while since a pretty gal gave me her number.” But it was as if again he was simply making the expected joke. She still didn’t see any actual interest there—he looked at her like she was a sister or cousin he’d been relieved to find doing better than he’d hoped.

“That’s to get in touch with me if you have questions or…whatever. Monday, 8 o’clock. No equipment needed. Obviously you know where the rink is.”

She paid the bill and waited at her car until she saw that he got into the cab, surprisingly steady despite all the Jack he’d drunk. Then she unlocked the car door and slipped into the driver’s seat, hoping that she’d actually see him there on Monday, that he’d accept that she was trying to be a friend to him. He’d saved her once. Maybe she could help return the favor in some small way.


	63. Haymitch/Johanna: "Shit, are you bleeding?" (for Jeeno2)

Everything went to hell in a moment. Eleven was free, finally, and they were already turning their mind towards plans for the next district—finishing up Seven, as everyone still under Capitol control would be gathered down in the winter town, it would be an ideal time to strike and clear out all the Peacekeepers, rather than capturing a handful of logging camps as the Seven rebels had during the summer. Given the help from outside, one last big push would get it done. Her home would finally be free, and Johanna couldn’t help her eagerness at that. 

Then suddenly the sound of gunshots filled the air, and there was a sharp sting in her chest as she fell to the ground, tackled there by Haymitch as he growled, “Get down,” his body covering hers. 

Wind knocked out of her, body protesting being smashed into the hard cobblestones of the square, that wasn’t the worst. The worst was lying there, pinned beneath the solid bulk of a man’s bigger, stronger body, smelling his sweat, feeling that hot breath on her cheek and the twitches of his body against her, hearing his panting. 

Her hand flailed out to the side—the axe was there, it had to be there, she’d seen Clark drop it when he wrestled her to the ground. But it wasn’t there this time. There was nothing but the hard, unforgiving stones of the courtyard where he’d found her by the fountain. None of them were loose enough to grab, either.

She said “No”, throat so tight with fear that her scream emerged as more of a whisper, and waiting for his hand to clamp down over her mouth and stifle her cries and protests. It was going to happen this time. “Get off me,” she pleaded, even as it had to be useless, hating herself for begging. She couldn’t breathe.

But a miracle happened. Her flailing and shoving at him with all her might somehow worked—had terror given her additional strength to equal his? There was just enough space for her to get away. As she scrambled out from underneath him, coughing, her lungs burning with the effort to catch her breath and spattering blood on the stones as she coughed—she must have bit her cheek in the struggle—she looked for a weapon, saw the knife he wore on his belt.

As she reached for it, now she noticed something off. Curled in tightly around himself, groaning softly, he was bleeding already. His shirt was already soaked through with red around his right flank, the color of it wetly staining the pale blue fabric a dark purple-black like nightlock. She stared in confusion. Had she wounded him somehow? The axe wasn’t in her hand. It was nowhere nearby. But he was bleeding, badly wounded. “Are you…bleeding?” she asked stupidly. 

Then she started to notice more details. Blue shirt—he ought to have been wearing a Five tribute’s dusky purple to begin. His hair—it was a riot of glossy black curls, not Clark’s dirty blond hair, stick-straight, lank and oily from days without washing. He wasn’t a stringy teenager either, instead having a man’s solid build.

The mounting evidence of things that didn’t fit now ruptured through the walls of the past that had closed around her again. As she looked hastily around for a moment she saw someone on the ground too maybe twenty feet away, wrestled there by a group of people. She didn’t hear what any of them were yelling. It didn’t matter right now, dazed as she was. She’d been shot. He’d been shot trying to protect her.

Her drop to the stones beside him was more of a graceless collapse than anything. But she reached out and found his hand. Whether all that blood was his or hers didn’t seem to matter. Nobody had ever thought she was worth it; stupid man, trying to take a bullet for her. “Why?” she managed to wheeze the single word through the burning pain in her lungs. 

She must have looked like a horror as she leaned over him, bleeding from the mouth like Snow. But his eyes slid half-open and he looked up at her. There was that infuriating wry half-smile on his lips, as if he was sitting on a couch with not a care in the world rather than bleeding out from getting gut-shot. He managed each word in a ragged gasp. “Peeta…a real…bad…influence.”

What did that even mean? She shook her head, not able to deal with his messages within messages right now. Her brain was too exhausted. And he closed his eyes and didn’t say anything more. But his fingers still gripped hers. “Stop dying,” she pleaded with him. Everyone she loved had died when Johanna wasn’t there beside them—her family, Finnick. So if she stayed with him, obviously Haymitch couldn’t die.

She stayed there, holding his hand in hers, going number and more tired, for a minute or an hour. Finally the medics came, and she wouldn’t let him go even then, as they barked orders that became a harsh buzz in her ears. With a small sting of pain in her arm, the blackness of oblivion came over her.


End file.
